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The  Marks  of  a  Man; 

Or,  The  Essentials  of  Christian 
Character 


BY 
ROBERT  ELLIOTT  SPEER,  M.  A. 


THE  MERRICK  LECTURES  FOR  1906-7 

Delivered  at  the  Ohio  Wesleyan  University,  Dela- 
ware, O.,  December  6-10,  1906 


FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  CHICAGO  TORONTO 

LONDON     AND     EDINBURG 


COPYRIGHT,  1907,  BY 
JENNINGS  AND  GKAHAM 


THE  MEEEICK  LECTUEES 


By  the  gift  of  the  late  Rev.  Frederick  Merrick, 
M.  D.,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  for  fifty-one  years  a  member 
of  the  Faculty,  and  for  thirteen  of  those  years  Presi- 
dent of  Ohio  Wesleyan  University,  a  fund  was  es- 
tablished providing  an  annual  income  for  the  pur- 
pose of  securing  lectures  within  the  general  field  of 
Experimental  and  Practical  Religion.  The  follow- 
ing courses  have  previously  been  given  on  this  foun- 
dation : 

Daniel    Curry,  D.  D.  —  "Christian    Education." 

President  James  McCosh,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.  —  "Testa 
of  the  Various  Kinds  of  Truth." 

Bishop  Randolph  S.  Foster,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.—  "The 
Philosophy  of  Christian  Experience." 

Professor  James  Stalker,  D.  D.  —  "The  Preacher 
and  His  Models." 

John  W.  Butler,  D.  D.  —  "Mission  Work  in 
Mexico." 

Professor  George  Adam  Smith,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.  — 
"Christ  in  the  Old  Testament." 

Bishop  James  W.  Bashford,  Ph.  D.,  D.  D., 
LL.  D.—  "The  Science  of  Religion." 

3 


4  The  Merrick  Lectures 

James  M.  Buckley,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.— "The  Nat- 
ural and  Spiritual  Orders  and  Their  Relations." 

John  E.  Mott,  M.  A.,  F.  E.  G.  S.— "The  Pastor 
and  Modern  Missions." 

Bishop  Elijah  E.  Hoss,  D.  D.,  LL.  D. ;  Professor 
Doremus  A.  Hayes,  Ph.  D.,  S.  T.  D.,  LL.  D. ; 
Charles  E.  Jefferson,  D.  D.,  LL.  D. ;  Bishop  William 
F.  McDowell,  D.  D.,  LL.  D. ;  President  Edwin  H. 
Hughes,  D.  D.— "The  New  Age  and  Its  Creed." 


INTRODUCTION 


These  lectures  of  Mr.  Robert  E.  Speer  make  the 
eleventh  course  delivered  on  the  Merrick  foundation. 
The  lectures  of  last  year,  entitled  "The  New  Age  and 
Its  Creed,"  were  critical,  theological,  comprehensive 
—  giving  a  wide  view  of  the  character  of  our  age 
and  the  needed  adaptation  of  religious  thought  and 
work  to  the  changing,  or  already  changed,  conditions 
of  the  modern  world. 

The  present  course  is  direct,  ethical,  practical; 
a  consideration  of  the  fundamental  and  universal 
principles  that  apply  to  Christian  life  in  all  ages. 
The  profound  impression  produced  on  the  occasion 
of  their  delivery  by  their  assertions,  their  arguments, 
and  the  intense  personal  force  with  which  they  are 
backed,  justifies  the  expectation  that  a  multitude 
will  find  in  them,  as  many  have  already  found,  a 
mighty  impulse  to  higher  living. 

They  present,  to  quote  the  words  of  a  resolution 
presented  at  their  close  by  leading  citizens  of  the 
town,  "a  working-plan  of  life,  set  forth  with  clear- 
ness, with  practicalness,  and  with  convincing  passion 
and  power."  The  ideal  of  character  which  they  exalt 

5 


6  Introduction 

is  like  some  snowy  mountain,  lofty,  pure,  and  won- 
derfully beautiful.  Because  man  has  something 
within  him  of  the  divine  nature,  his  heart  longs  to 
reach  the  summit  which  thus  breaks  upon  his  vision. 
The  mountain  seems  (those  who  have  dwelt  at  the 
foot  of  great  peaks  will  understand  what  this  means) 
to  follow  even  him  who  wanders  far  out  upon  the 
plains,  hovers  above  him  like  a  speaking  friend,  and 
draws  him  irresistibly  to  its  glorious  heights.  That 
the  feet  can  be  strengthened  for  the  arduous  climb, 
none  will  doubt  who  know  the  power  of  Jesus  Christ. 

HEBBEET  WELCH. 
Ohio  Wesleyan  University. 


PREFACE 


I  PEOPOSE  to  speak  in  these  lectures  of  some  of 
the  essentials  of  Christian  character,  of  the  marks 
cf  a  man.  It  is  of  qualities  of  character  that  I  in- 
tend to  speak,  not  of  how  these  qualities  are  to  be 
acquired.  And  yet  I  wish  to  say  a  word  on  that 
point  at  the  outset  to  avoid  any  misunderstanding. 
I  assume  the  Christian  position  —  that  we  are  agreed 
as  to  the  relation  of  Christ  to  Christian  character. 
Surely  this  can  be  assumed  here  in  this  place,  and 
we  can  go  on  to  ask  ourselves  whether  our  Christian 
character  is  the  kind  it  ought  to  be.  But  if  this 
were  not  to  be  assumed,  something  would  need  to  be 
said  at  length  in  beginning  these  lectures  on  a  point 
which  is  very  much  obscured  in  the  thinking  of  our 
day. 

We  are  told  by  many  voices  that  the  matter  of 
creed  has  been  overdone,  and  that  the  great  gospel 
for  our  day  is  not  creed  but  character.  It  does  not 
matter  what  men  think,  it  only  matters  what  they 
are.  Now,  this  is  very  superficial  talk.  So  men  be- 
lieve in  character  but  not  in  creed.  Well,  what  kind 
of  character  do  they  believe  in  ?  Character  does  not 
define  itself  or  its  ideals.  The  Mohammedan  believes 

7 


8  Preface 

in  character  and  his  man  of  right  character  may  have 
four  legal  wives  and  divorce  them  at  his  own  pleas- 
ure, and  as  many  slave  girls  and  concubines  as  he 
wishes,  and  he  can  send  these  away  without  divorce. 
Among  ourselves  one  man  is  satisfied  with  a  charac- 
ter that  allows  the  defrauding  of  widows  or  the  ac- 
ceptance of  graft.  Another  condemns  this  but  ar- 
ranges for  rebates.  One  student  cheats  in  examina- 
tions, and  another  thinks  that  certain  vices  are  neces- 
sary and  venial.  What  kind  of  character  does  a  man 
believe  in  ?  The  moment  he  begins  to  answer  he  for- 
mulates a  creed. 

And  just  as  character  can  not  erect  its  own  stand- 
ards, it  has  no  self-creative  power.  I  can  not  lift 
my  body  up  to  the  table  by  my  boot-straps,  and  I  can 
not  lift  my  life  by  my  will  into  a  perfect  character. 
!NTo  man  ever  got  out  of  his  will  more  than  he  found 
there.  When  a  man  finds  that  in  his  will  there  is  no 
power  of  a  .holy  life,  how  is  he  to  accomplish  holi- 
ness by  that  will  ?  Character  can  neither  create  its 
own  ideals  of  perfection  nor  realize  them  when  once 
they  are  given  to  it. 

And  character  has  no  self-corrective  power. 
Character  deteriorates,  as  everything  else  deterior- 
ates, unless  it  is  fed  from  living  external  springs. 
The  best  character  is  in  constant  need  of  checks  from 
without  lest  it  run  to  excess,  and  of  stimulus  from 
without  lest  it  lag  by  the  way. 

When  men  say  that  they  believe  in  character  and 
that  "it  does  not  matter  what  men  think,  it  only  mat- 
ters what  men  are,"  we  answer  that  even  so  much 


Preface  9 

truth  involves  postulates  and  intellectual  necessities 
which  run  beyond  character.  We  might,  to  be  sure, 
answer  their  folly  after  its  kind.  If  they  think  that 
it  does  not  matter  what  men  think,  then  what  does 
it  matter  to  us  what  they  think?  Why  are  they  so 
anxious  to  prove  to  us  that  they  think  right  ? 

Of  course  it  matters  what  men  think.  What  we 
think  about  God  and  man,  about  duty  and  truth, 
above  all,  what  we  think  about  Jesus  Christ  in 
whom  these  problems  are  focussed  for  us, — these 
thoughts  of  ours  are  the  only  things  that  do  matter. 
They  are  all  that  interested  Christ.  The  Pharisees 
were  the  best  people  of  His  day,  but  their  perform- 
ances did  not  particularly  interest  Christ.  He 
wanted  to  know  what  they  thought.  From  within, 
out  of  the  heart  sprang  the  determining  stream.  And 
His  supreme  concern  was  to  get  men  to  think  right 
about  Him.  That  was  His  great  question,  "What 
do  you  think  of  ME  ?"  Our  answer  to  that  ques- 
tion determines  character  for  us. 

I  assume  that  we  assent  to  this,  that  we  know 
that  we  can  not  make  ourselves  the  kind  of  men  we 
ought  to  be,  and  that  we  believe  that  Christ  must 
reproduce  His  own  image  in  us.  But  what  will  the 
lineaments  of  that  image  be  in  us,  in  contact  with 
the  problems  of  our  life  and  our  times?  What  are 
the  fundamental  ethical  traits  of  Christian  character 
for  us?  That  is  the  question  which  we  are  to  at- 
tempt to  answer.  I  shall  venture  to  speak  very  in- 
formally and  colloquially. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

INTRODUCTION,  -  5 

PREFACE,      -  7 

I.     TRUTH,     -  -      13 

II.     PURITY,  49 

III.  SERVICE,  -  .-*••     83 

IV.  FREEDOM,      -  123 
V.     PROGRESS  AND  PATIENCE,        ...    155 


TRUTH 

No  LIE  IN  CHAKACTEE  EVER  JUSTIFIABLE 


I  do  not  mean  to  diminish  the  blame  of  the  injurious 
and  malicious  sin,  of  the  selfish  and  deliberate  falsity ;  yet 
it  seems  to  me,  that  the  shortest  way  to  check  the  darker 
forms  of  deceit  is  to  set  more  scrupulous  watch  against  those 
which  have  mingled,  unregarded  and  unchastised,  with  the 
current  of  our  life.  Do  not  let  us  lie  at  all.  Do  not  think 
of  one  falsity  as  harmless,  and  another  as  slight,  and  another 
as  unintended.  Cast  them  all  aside:  they  may  be  light  and 
accidental ;  but  they  are  an  ugly  soot  from  the  smoke  of  the 
pit,  for  all  that :  and  it  is  better  that  our  hearts  should  be 
swept  clean  of  them,  without  over  care  as  to  which  is 
largest  or  blackest.  Speaking  truth  is  like  writing  fair,  and 
comes  only  by  practice ;  it  is  less  a  matter  of  will  than  of 
habit,  and  I  doubt  if  any  occasion  can  be  trivial  which  per- 
mits the  practice  and  formation  of  such  a  habit.  To  speak 
and  act  truth  with  constancy  and  precision  is  nearly  as  diffi- 
cult, and  perhaps  as  meritorious,  as  to  speak  it  under 
intimidation  and  penalty ;  and  it  is  a  strange  thought  how 
many  men  there  are,  as  I  trust,  who  would  hold  to  it  at  the 
cost  of  fortune  or  life,  for  one  who  would  hold  to  it  at  the 
cost  of  a  little  daily  trouble.  And  seeing  that  of  all  sin 
there  is,  perhaps,  none  more  flatly  opposite  to  the  Al- 
mighty, none  more  *' wan  ting  the  good  of  virtue  and  of  being," 
than  this  of  lying,  it  is  surely  a  strange  insolence  to  fall  into 
the  foulness  of  it. — RUSKIN,  "  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture." 


TRUTH 

I  HAVE  spoken  of  the  ethical  fundamentals  of 
Christian  character,  but  in  reality  there  is  but  one, 
and  that  is  truth.  All  the  others  are  only  outgrowths 
or  applications  of  the  central  and  bottommost  quality 
of  absolute  veracity,  that  is,  a  veracity  which  allows 
no  qualification  or  exception  of  any  kind  or  under 
any  circumstances.  These  explanations  are  necessary 
because  they  raise  the  whole  issue.  Many  people 
believe  in  truth  who  do  not  'believe  in  it  at  all.  They 
agree  that  the  truth  is  sacred  and  that  no  quality  is 
more  vital,  but  they  destroy  the  moral  value  of  their 
acknowledgment  for  purposes  of  absolute  character 
by  allowing  exceptions  of  one  kind  or  another  which 
demolish  the  inviolateness  of  the  truth  and  prevent 
our  building  it  as  the  unassailable  and  indestructible 
rock  into  the  foundation  of  character.  Indeed  most 
people  seem  to  be  ready  to  deny  the  inviolable  sacred- 
ness  of  truth.  I  have  been  astonished  in  speaking  of 
the  matter  in  and  out  of  our  colleges  to  discover  that 
the  doctrine  of  the  uncompromisable  rigidity  of  the 
truth  is  widely  repudiated.  Men  are  ready  at  once 
to  dispute  it  in  support  of  the  contrary  view  that  the 
claims  of  the  truth  are  only  relative  and  that  often 


1 6  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

they  may  be  annulled  and  falsehood  substituted  in  its 
stead.  The  principle  which  is  at  stake  here  seems 
to  be  vital.  There  can  be  no  solid  and  impreg- 
nable character  that  does  not  rest  on  solid  and  im- 
pregnable foundations  and  there  are  no  such  founda- 
tions if  truth  can  be  tampered  with  and  replaced 
with  a  lie  whenever  in  the  judgment  of  the  liar  the 
circumstances  and  issues  make  a  lie  justifiable. 

My  own  perception  of  the  fundamental  signifi- 
cance of  the  problem  involved  was  due  to  the  late  Dr. 
Trumbull.  In  three  books  Dr.  Trumbull  made  three 
great  contributions  to  the  thought  of  our  day.  His 
Friendship,  the  Master  Passion  is  the  noblest  book 
we  have  on  love.  In  The  Blood  Covenant  he 
opened  up  a  new  biological  conception  of  the  atone- 
ment which  meets  the  demand  of  the  modern  mind 
and  at  the  same  time  does  fuller  justice  to  the  evan- 
gelical conviction  than  the  old  theories  of  the  atone- 
ment have  done.  But  of  all  his  score  or  more  of  vol- 
umes he  himself  would  probably  have  singled  out  A 
Lie  Never  Justifiable  as  the  book  which  had  most 
of  his  life  blood  in  it  and  which  set  forth  his  deepest 
belief  in  regard  to  the  right  principle  of  Christian 
character.  He  hated  with  all  his  intense  soldier  soul 
all  liars  and  every  lie  and  he  held  and  taught  that 
the  vital  and  fundamental  thing  is  the  truth  and  that 
nothing  can  ever  justify  its  surrender  or  betrayal.  I 
am  going  to  set  forth  here  in  part  what  I  learned 
from  him. 

How  a  man  stands  on  this  matter  is  the  central 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  17 

question  of  character.  We  do  not  care  greatly  for 
the  creed  of  any  man  whose  conception  of  truth  is 
so  capricious  and  insecure  that  he  is  willing,  when 
the  price  seems  to  him  sufficient,  to  betray  it.  "Will 
the  man  lie?",  that  is  the  ultimate  question.  If  he 
will,  then  what  is  there  about  the  man  that  is  abso- 
lutely dependable?  Does  his  philosophy  regard  the 
duty  of  truth  telling  and  truth  doing  and  truth  be- 
ing as  a  contingent  duty,  sometimes  dissolved  by  the 
comfort  or  profit  or  greater  ease  of  falsehood  of  word 
or  act  or  character  If  it  does,  then  whence  is  solid- 
ity, rigid  consistency,  without  which  there  can  be 
no  highest  character,  to  be  derived  ? 

To  make  the  issue  which  I  wish  to  press  at  the 
outset  as  sharp  as  possible,  let  us  narrow  the  whole 
matter  of  truth  in  character  for  the  moment  to  the 
matter  of  truth  in  speech.  If  we  can  establish  there 
thte  principle  that  the  essential  thing  is  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  supreme  duty  of  exceptionless  truthful- 
ness and  of  the  unjustifiableness  of  any  lie  whatso- 
ever, and  that  even  where  a  lie  is  held  to  be  justifia- 
ble it  is  wrong,  we  shall  be  in  a  position  to  go  on  to 
claim  that  deeds  and  thoughts  and  inward  parts  and 
all  the  character  must  be  brought  into  obedience, 
without  evasion  or  qualification  or  hedging  of  any 
sort,  to  the  clean  and  inviolable  truth. 

Now  the  issue  is  not  one  of  definition.  The  defi- 
nitions are  important  but  for  our  purpose  we  do  not 
need  to  go  into  the  question  of  what  constitutes  a  lie, 
of  what  silences  or  utterances  of  truth  by  which 

2 


i8  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

others  deceive  themselves  are  legitimate.  All  admit 
that  to  say  to  another  that  which  is  not  true  with 
intent  to  deceive  is  a  lie.  Is  such  a  lie  ever  right? 
Is  the  assent  to  the  principle  that  such  a  lie  is  ever 
right  consistent  with  the  highest  character  ? 

In  all  history  and  in  all  lands  there  have  been 
those  who  answered  "No"  and  "Never"  to  these  ques- 
tions. Among  the  Scandinavians  it  was  taught  in 
The  Saga  of  Fridfhjof  that  a  lie  even  to  protect  a 
pure  woman's  name  was  ignoble.  To  that  end  and 
to  secure  his  happiness  Fridthjof  was  tempted  to  lie 
and  scorned  to  do  it. 

"  Then  echoed  from  the  ring 
Of  crowded  warriors,  '  Say  but  nay,  say  nay! 
Thy  simple  word  we  '11  trust ;  we  '11  court  for  thee, 
Thou,  Thorstein's  son,  art  good  as  any  king's. 
Say  nay !     Say  nay  I     And  thine  is  Ingeborg !' 
'  The  happiness,'  I  answered, '  of  my  life 
On  one  word  hangs ;  but  fear  not  therefore,  Helge, 
I  would  not  lie  to  gain  the  joys  of  Valhal, 
Much  less  the  earth's  delight.' " 

Among  the  Egyptians  "truth  was  the  main  car- 
dinal virtue"  and  "falsehood  was  considered  disgrace- 
ful among  them."  When  the  soul  appeared  in  the 
Hall  of  Two  Truths  for  final  judgment,  it  must  be 
able  to  say,  "I  have  not  told  a  falsehood,"  or  fail  of 
acquittal.  There  were  low  practices  and  in  conse- 
quence many  liars  and  apologists  for  lies  among  the 
Greeks,  but  there  were  also  teachers  who  saw  the 
truth.  "I  will  not  stain  speech  with  a  lie"  says  Pin- 
dar. "The  genuine  lie,"  declared  Plato,  "is  hated 


Truth:   No  Lie  Justifiable  19 

by  all  gods  and  men."  "That  man  has  no  fair 
glory,"  writes  Theognis,  "in  whose  heart  dwells  a 
lie  or  from  whose  lips  it  has  once  issued."  Pro- 
fessor Lamberton,  in  commenting  on  the  tragedy  of 
Philoctetes  by  Sophocles,  asserts  that  the  plain  teach- 
ing of  the  tragedy  is  that  '  'the  purposes  of  heaven  are 
not  to  be  served  by  a  lie."  And  Aristotle  seems  to 
think  that  the  greater  the  reason  for  telling  a  lie  the 
more  certain  the  true  man  will  be  not  to  tell  it ;  '  'for 
the  lover  of  truth,"  he  says,  "who  is  truthful  when 
nothing  is  at  stake,  will  yet  more  surely  be  truthful 
when  there  is  a  stake:  for  he  will  [then]  shun  the 
lie  as  shameful,  since  he  shuns  it  simply  because  it 
is  a  lie."  And  the  heathen  peoples  with  all  their 
lying  and  justification  of  lies,  have  had  teachers  who 
saw  that  they  were  wrong.  The  sacred  books  of  Hin- 
duism explicitly  approve,  as  some  Christian  theolo- 
gians have  done,  of  lies  when  the  liar  thinks  the  cir- 
cumstances warrant,  but  even  among  the  Hindus 
there  is  also  a  higher  conviction.  They  have  a  say- 
ing that  "The  sin  of  killing  a  Brahman  is  as  great  as 
that  of  killing  one  hundred  cows,  and  the  sin  of  kill- 
ing one  hundred  cows  is  as  great  as  that  of  killing 
a  woman,  and  the  sin  of  killing  one  hundred  women 
is  as  great  as  that  of  killing  a  child  in  the  womb,  and 
the  sin  of  killing  one  hundred  children  in  the  womb 
is  as  great  as  that  of  telling  a  lie." 

When  we  turn  from  this  ethnic  notion  to  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Bible  we  are  left  in  no  doubt  as  to  the 
shame  and  sin  of  all  lies.  The  Old  Testament  law 


20  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

was  unequivocal.  "Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness 
against  thy  neighbor."  "Keep  thee  far  from  a  false 
matter."  "Ye  shall  not  steal,  neither  shall  ye  deal 
falsely,  nor  lie  one  to  another."  A  lie  found  no  place 
in  the  code  of  the  Old  Testament  gentleman.  The 
Psalms  reveal  that  code.  They  declare  that  a  gentle- 
man can  have  no  respect  for  liars.  Three  times  in 
the  119th  Psalm  the  writer  breaks  out  intensely  "I 
hate  every  false  way."  "I  hate  and  abhor  lying." 
The  Proverbs  indicate  what  the  popular  feeling  was. 
It  was  a  sincere  contempt  for  liars,  a  high  admira- 
tion for  the  faithful  witness  who  could  not  be  led  to 
lie,  a  deep  assurance  that  "a  false  witness  shall  not  be 
unpunished  and  that  he  that  uttereth  lies  shall  per- 
ish" (Prov.  vi,  IT,  18;  xiv,  5,  25;  xix,  5,  9).  And 
in  one  of  the  sublimest  passages  in  the  book,  Agur, 
the  son  of  Jakeh,  prays : 

"  Two  things  have  I  asked  of  thee ; 
Deny  me  them  not  before  I  die : 
Remove  far  from  me  falsehood  and  lies : 
Give  me'neither  poverty  nor  riches ; 
Feed  me  with  the  food  that  is  needful  for  me." 

The  prophets  are  fierce  in  their  denunciation 
of  those  who  have  made  lies  their  refuge  (Isa.  xxviii, 
15,  17),  or  trusted  in  falsehood  (Jer.  xiii,  25), 
and  they  pronounce  the  flying  curse  of  God  against 
him  that  lies  in  the  name  of  God,  which  would  seem 
to  mean  against  him  that  tells  a  "justifiable  lie,"  and 
the  curse  of  God,  they  declare,  will  abide  in  the  liar's 
house  and  consume  it  even  to  the  timber  and  stone 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  21 

thereof  (Zech.  v,  1-4).  If  possible  the  New  Testa- 
ment is  fiercer  still.  Our  Lord  denounced  the  devil 
as  the  fountain  of  lies.  "The  devil,"  said  he,  "was 
a  murderer  from  the  beginning  and  stood  not  in  the 
truth,  because  there  is  no  truth  in  him.  When  he 
speaketh  a  lie,  he  speaketh  of  his  own;  for  he  is  a 
liar  and  the  father  thereof."  The  one  terrible  in- 
ternal tragedy  in  the  early  Church  was  the  merciless 
destruction  of  two  liars.  It  was  evident  that  with 
whatever  else  God  would  be  patient,  He  would  not 
be  patient  with  lies  and  would  not  tolerate  them  in 
the  Church.  Paul  would  allow  no  trifling  with  the 
truth  among  the  churches  which  he  had  founded,  and 
he  repeated  the  ancient  injunction  with  fresh  sanc- 
tions, "Lie  not  one  to  another,  seeing  that  you  have 
put  off  the  old  man  with,  his  doings."  A  lie  would  be  a 
relapse  into  that  old  man.  "Putting  away  falsehood 
speak  ye  truth  each  one  with  his  neighbor,  for  ye 
are  members  one  of  another."  Even  the  gentle  John 
grows  intense  and  stern  on  lies.  "!N"o  lie,"  says  he, 
not  excepting  our  modern  "justifiable"  ones,  "is  of 
the  truth."  And  the  Bible  ends  with  some  terrible 
pictures  of  the  exclusion  from  the  city  of  God  of 
the  elements  that  can  not  possibly  be  incorporated 
into  the  life  of  that  city.  "There  shall  in  no  wise 
enter  into  it  anything  unclean,  or  he  that  maketh 
an  abomination  and  a  lie.  .  .  .  Without  are  the 
dogs  and  the  sorcerers  and  the  fornicators  and  the 
murderers  and  the  idolaters  and  every  one  that  lov- 
eth  and  maketh  a  lie." 


22  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

So  the  heart  of  man  and  the  "Word  of  God  agree 
that  truth  is  always  right  and  a  lie  is  always  wrong. 
But  I  wish  to  set  the  matter  forth  more  fully  and 
to  show  why  a  lie  is  never  right  and  can  never  be 
right.  If  this  can  be  done,  we  shall  then  realize  viv- 
idly how  indispensable  truth  is  as  the  foundation  of  a 
right  character. 

The  bottom  principle  in  this  matter  is  that  God 
can  not  lie  and  that  what  God  can  not  do  He  can  not 
authorize  man  to  do  for  Him.  God  can  take  life. 
He  is  doing  it  every  day  and  because  it  is  not  morally 
inconsistent  with  His  character  to  do  so,  men  acting 
by  God's  will  can  take  life  also.  But  God  can  not 
lie.  Paul  declares  unequivocally,  "God  can  not  lie," 
and  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  says 
the  same  thing,  "It  is  impossible  for  God  to 
lie"  (Heb.  i,  2;  vi,  18).  If  God  could  lie  He 
would  cease  to  be  a  godlike  God  to  us.  We  can 
preserve  our  conception  of  Him  only  by  believing 
Him  to  be  the  absolute  truth.  "Truth  is,"  as  Dr. 
Charles  Hodge  said,  "so  to  speak,  the  very  sub- 
stratum of  Deity.  It  is  in  such  a  sense  the  founda- 
tion of  all  the  moral  perfections  of  God,  that  without 
it  they  can  not  be  conceived  of  as  existing."  No  lie 
accordingly  can  be  of  God,  for  God  can  not  lie.  All 
lies  are  outside  of  God.  Where  they  came  from,  the 
Son  of  God  plainly  declared.  The  father  of  them  all, 
by  what  euphemisms  they  may  be  cloaked,  is  the 
devil. 

And  just  as  a  lie  is  inconsistent  with  the  charac- 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  23 

ter  of  God,  so  is  it  inconsistent  with  the  character 
of  man,  for  that  ought  to  be  an  utterance  of  the  char- 
acter of  God.  Nothing  should  be  allowed  in  it  ex- 
cept what  is  in  the  plan  of  God  for  it,  and  God  who 
can  not  lie  can  not  have  provided  a  place  for  lies  in 
the  lives  of  men.  Any  man,  accordingly,  "who  vio- 
lates the  truth  sins  against  the  very  foundations  of 
his  moral  being.  As  a  false  God  is  no  God,"  says 
Dr.  Hodge,  "so  a  false  man  is  no  man ;  he  can  never 
answer  the  end  of  his  being.  There  can  lie  in  him 
nothing  that  is  stable  and  trustworthy  and  good." 

On  any  other  basis  than  that  of  absolute  truthful- 
ness the  very  foundations  of  human  confidence,  of 
man's  trust  in  man,  are  dissolved.  The  allowance  of 
the  principle  of  falsehood  by  the  recognition  of  the 
justifiableness  of  any  lie,  as  Dr.  Thornwell  said, 
"would  obviously  be  the  destruction  of  all  confi- 
dence." You  hold  that  a  lie  is  sometimes  justifiable. 
How  can  I  know  when  you  think  it  is  ?  The  circum- 
stances may  be  such  as  to  lead  me  to  feel  that  at 
whatever  cost  or  pain  to  you,  you  owe  me  the  truth 
and  you  may  think  that  they  are  such  as  to  warrant 
you  in  lying  to  me.  This  transfers  the  moral  founda- 
tions of  society  from  solid  principle  to  the  utterly 
precarious  and  unreliable  basis  of  individual  caprice, 
and  will  often  substitute  /falsehood  springing  from 
cowardice  for  the  solid  and  unshifting  and  coura- 
geous truth. 

And  it  is  not  only  from  human  intercourse  that 
the  foundations  disappear.  They  are  dissolved  be- 


24  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

neath  all  knowledge  of  nature.  All  science  rests  on 
the  axiom  that  there  is  an  inviolable  and  sacred  truth 
and  that  nature  is  veracious  and  will  not  lie,  and 
that  when  we  have  got  at  the  truth  we  have  it  and 
not  something  that  may  be  equivocated  and  toyed 
with:  All  true  scientists  are  seekers  for  the  truth, 
who  would  scorn  to  deceive  and  who  hold  the  truth 
to  be  absolute  and  supreme.  Mr.  Huxley  is  no  model 
man,  but  his  son  describes  some  characteristics  that 
ought  to  be  felt  to  be  model  when  he  sets  forth  "that 
passion  for  veracity  which  was  perhaps  his  strongest 
characteristic,  an  uncompromising  passion  for  truth 
in  thought,  which  would  admit  no  particle  of  self- 
deception,  no  assertion  beyond  what  could  be  veri- 
fied ;  for  truth  in  act,  perfect  straightforwardness 
and  sincerity,  with  complete  disregard  of  personal 
consequences  for  uttering  unpalatable  fact.  Truth- 
fulness in  his  eyes  was  the  cardinal  virtue,  without 
which  no  stable  society  can  exist.  .  .  .  The 
lie  from  interested  motives  was  only  more  hateful  to 
him  than  the  lie  from  self-delusion  or  foggy  think- 
ing. ...  In  his  mind,  no  compromise  was  pos- 
sible between  truth  and  untruth."  Leonard  Huxley 
quotes  also  in  his  life  of  his  father  an  extract  from  a 
journal  of  an  acquaintance  of  his  father,  who  writes 
of  having  dined  with  him  at  a  family  party.  "Much 
lively  discussion  was  carried  on  on  the  subjects  of 
truth,  education,  and  women's  rights.  Our  hostess," 

says  the  journal,  "Lady  -    ,  was,  if  possible, 

more  vehement  and  paradoxical  than  her  wont,  and 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  25 

vigorously  maintained  that  truth  was  no  virtue  in 
itself  but  must  be  inculcated  for  expediency's  sake. 
The  opposite  view  found  a  champion  in  Professor 
Huxley,  who  described  himself  as  'almost  a  fanatic 

for  the  sake  of  truth.'     Lady suggested  that 

truth  was  often  a  very  selfish  virtue  and  that  a  man 
of  noble  and  unselfish  character  might  lie  for  the 
sake  of  a  friend,  to  which  some  one  replied  that  after 
a  course  of  this  unselfish  lying  the  noble  character 
was  pretty  sure  to  deteriorate,  while  the  Professor 
laughingly  suggested  that  the  owner  had  a  good 
chance  of  finding  himself  landed  ultimately  in 
Botany  Bay.  The  celebrated  instance  of  John  Ingle- 
sant's  perjury  for  the  sake  of  Charles  I.  was  then 
brought  forward,  and  it  was  this  which  led  Professor 
Huxley  to  say  that  in  his  judgment  no  one  had  the 
right  passively  to  submit  to  a  false  accusation,  and 
that  'moral  suicide'  was  as  blameworthy  as  physical 
suicide.  'He  may  refuse  to  commit  another,  but  he 
ought  not  to  allow  himself  to  be  believed  worse  than 
he  actually  is.  It  is  a  loss  to  the  world  of  moral 
force  which  can  not  be  afforded.' '  What  gave  Mr. 
Huxley  his  enormous  influence  was  this  fanaticism 
for  veracity.  There  can  be  no  knowledge  without  it. 
But  the  allowance  of  the  legitimacy  of  untruth  is 
not  only  fatal  to  knowledge,  it  is,  as  Huxley  con- 
tended,  anti-social.  It  disintegrates  association  and 
pollutes  the  organization  of  men  into  societies.  This 
was  Paul's  view.  He  forbade  falsehood  and  required 
absolute  truth  each  man  with  his  neighbor,  on  what 


26  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

ground  ?  Because  "we  are  members  one  of  another." 
I  have  argued  that  any  untruth  is  immoral  on  per- 
sonal grounds,  but  it  is  also  illegitimate  for  social 
reasons.  "Truthfulness,"  acknowledges  one  who  yet 
is  misled  in  this  matter,  "is  owed  to  society  as  essen- 
tial to  its  integrity.  It  is  the  indispensable  bond  of 
social  life.  .  .  .  The  liar  is  rightly  regarded  as 
an  enemy  of  mankind.  A  lie  is  not  an  affront  against 
the  person  to  whom  it  is  told,  but  an  offense  against 
humanity."  All  lies  are  treason  to  society. 

And  to  advance  but  one  other  consideration,  not 
only  is  a  lie  inconsistent  with  the  character  of  God 
and  with  human  integrity,  destructive  of  the  founda- 
tions of  human  confidence,  of  all  knowledge  and  of 
organized  society,  but  we  could  not  conceive  of  Christ 
as  lying.  "How,"  asks  Dr.  Dorner,  "shall  ethics 
ever  be  brought  to  recommend  the  duty  of  lying,  to 
recommend  evil  that  good  may  come  ?  The  test  for 
us  is  whether  we  could  ever  imagine  Christ  acting  in 
this  way."  And  all  noblest  men  we  could  not  longer 
deem  noble,  if  we  knew  that  they  deemed  the  duty 
of  truth  only  a  relative  duty  and  felt  entitled  to  de- 
termine when  they  might  indulge  in  a  lie.  The  great 
heroes  like  Stonewall  Jackson  and  Chinese  Gordon 
made  no  place  for  lies  or  untruth  of  any  sort  in  their 
ethical  convictions.  Jackson's  biographer,  Colonel 
Henderson,  of  the  British  army,  speaks  of  "his 
rigid  respect  for  truth,"  which  "seemed  to  strengthen 
the  impression  that  he  was  morbidly  scrupulous.  If 
he  unintentionally  made  a  misstatement — even  about 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  27 

some  trilling  matter — as  soon  as  he  discovered  his 
mistake,  he  would  lose  no  time  and  spare  no  trouble 
in  hastening  to  correct  it,  'Why  in  the  name  of 
reason,'  he  was  asked,  'do  you  walk  a  mile  in  the 
rain  for  a  perfectly  unimportant  thing  ?'  'Simply  be- 
cause I  have  discovered  that  it  was  a  misstatement, 
and  I  could  not  sleep  comfortably  unless  I  put  it 
right.' '  "If  you  tell  the  truth,"  wrote  Gordon  to 
his  sister,  "you  have  infinite  power  supporting  you ; 
but  if  not,  you  have  infinite  power  against  you.  The 
children  of  kings  should  be  above  all  deceit,  for  they 
have  a  mighty  and  a  jealous  Protector.  We  go  to 
other  gods, — Baal,  etc., — when  we  lie;  we  rely  on 
other  than  God.  We  may  for  a  time  seem  to  humbug 
men  but  not  God.  It  is  indeed  worldly  silliness  to 
be  deceitful.  .  .  .  O !  be  open  in  all  your  ways. 
It  is  a  girdle  around  your  loins,  strengthening  you 
in  all  your  wayfarings."  It  is  the  fearless  and  ex- 
ceptionless veracity  of  such  men  which  gives  them 
their  power.  To  the  men  of  acknowledged  highest 
character  no  lie  is  justifiable.  They  do  not  gird  their 
loins  with  deceit.  In  their  inward  parts  is  truth. 

Now  all  this  would  seem  to  make  out  an  un- 
answerable case  for  absolute  veracity  as  the  sacred 
and  inviolable  principle  of  character,  and  yet  there 
are  and  have  always  been  those  who,  while  of  course 
condemning  falsehood  and  praising  truth,  yet  argue 
that  lies  are  sometimes  justifiable,  and  thus  qualify 
the  value  of  the  one  fundamental  and  determining 
principle  of  life  by  subjecting  it  to  the  caprice  and 


28  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

liability  of  error  of  individual  feeling  and  judgment. 
This  is  to  open  the  possibility  of  substituting  the 
sinuous  for  the  straight  in  the  government  of  life. 
"The  more,"  says  Gordon,  "we  act  from  principle 
and  not  from  feelings,  the  straighter  is  our  course." 
It  is  not  necessary  here  to  trace  the  history  of  the 
debate  over  the  question  of  the  justifiableness  of  lies 
of  necessity,  so  called;  that  is,  lies  which  it  is 
easier  or  seems  more  kind  and  helpful  to  tell  than 
the  truth,  lies  where  falsehood  is  regarded  by  the 
liar  as  likely  to  accomplish  more  good  than  the  truth. 
Dr.  Trumbull's  little  book  reviews  the  long  discus- 
sion of  the  ages.  So  far  as  religions  are  concerned, 
while  followers  of  all  religions  may  be  found  on  both 
sides  of  the  question,  the  Christian  religion  stands  on 
one  side  over  against  the  non-Christian  religions  on 
the  other.  Christianity  will  tolerate  no  lies  at  all. 
Mohammed  provided  that  to  women,  to  save  life  and 
in  war,  lies  are  permissible,  and  Krishna,  the  Hindu 
,  god,  in  the  Mahdbarata,  declares  that  five  kinds  of 
lies  are  sinless,  those  told  in  connection  with  mar- 
riage, lies  for  the  gratification  of  lust,  lies  to  save 
one's  life  and  to  protect  one's  property,  and  lies  for 
the  sake  of  a  Brahmin.  Those  who  believe  that  some 
lies  are  right  are  in  good  heathen  company  and  they 
have  a  good  category  of  sinless  lies  already  estab- 
lished to  which  they  can  add  their  further  specimens. 
If  any  one  likes  this  company,  well  and  good,  or 
rather  ill  and  bad.  It  is  the  kind  of  company  which 
Jesus  vigorously  denounced  as  devilish. 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  29 

But  let  us  consider  the  matter  temperately. 
When  do  men  think  that  lies  are  justifiable  ?  I  once 
asked  twenty-five  boys  a  series  of  questions  about  a 
boy's  intellectual  and  moral  ideals.  Some  of  the 
boys  were  such  representative  types  as  are  found  at 
the  Hill  School  at  Pottstown  and  the  Hotchkiss 
School  at  Lakeville.  Some  were  respectable  boys  of 
poor  homes  downtown  in  New  York  City.  Some 
were  little  boys  in  well-to-do  homes  in  a  New  Tork 
suburb.  Poor  and  rich,  good  and  bad  boys  were  in- 
cluded. Among  the  questions  asked  were,  "Do  you 
think  a  lie  is  ever  justifiable  ?  If  so,  when  ?  If  not, 
why  not  ?"  Each  boy  wrote  out  his  answers  alone 
without  suggestion  and  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
other  boys.  Ten  boys  answered  the  question  as  to 
whether  a  lie  was  ever  warrantable,  with  a  clean 
"]STo."  One  shirked  the  problem  and  one  said,  "I 
do  n't  know,"  and  thirteen  believed  that  on  certain 
occasions  a  lie  would  be  justified.  The  boys  who 
answered  in  the  negative  gave  such  reasons  as  these : 
"A  lie  is  never  justifiable,"  said  an  eighteen-year-old 
boy,  "because  when  one  is  told  even  on  a  trivial  mat- 
ter or  as  a  joke  or  jolly,  as  it  is  said,  it  is  very  likely 
to  lead  to  worse  ones;  and  we  know  all  great  sins 
begin  by  some  small  sin  in  a  passing  matter,  which 
grows  and  grows  until  it  is  more  than  we  can  con- 
quer. All  things  begin  from  small  matters  and  grad- 
ually take  root  until  they  are  so  deep  that  they  can 
not  be  extracted."  "This  has  troubled  me,"  said  an- 
other, "as  I  used  to  think  that  a  lie  was  justifiable  if 


30  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

it  kept  pain  from  those  we  love.  But  I  see  that  it  is 
not  justifiable,  for  the  discovery  of  the  lie  would 
only  bring  more  sorrow."  "No,"  answered  a  third 
clear-souled  boy,  "because  a  lie  is  a  lie  and  morally 
wrong  in  whatever  way  it  is  looked  at."  A  fourth 
replied,  '-'I  think  a  lie  is  never  justifiable,  for  as*soon 
as  one  tells  the  slightest  lie,  if  only  in  fun,  it  is  just 
so  much  easier  for  him  to  tell  another  and  worse  one." 
"No,  under  no  circumstances,"  said  another,  but 
added  the  confession,  "I  often  find  it  hard  to  live  up 
to  my  convictions."  "I  do  not  think  it  is  ever  justi- 
fiable to  lie,"  another  reasoned,  "because  if  you  get 
out  of  a  thing  in  this  world  by  lying,  it  is  very  tem- 
porarily, and  it  is  a  sin  to  lie  and  will  have  to  be 
answered  for  again  to  God  at  the  Judgment-day.  If 
you  think  you  can  help  some  one  else  out  of  trouble 
by  lying,  or  will  put  them  in  trouble  by  telling  the 
truth,  do  n't  answer  anything  or  tell  the  truth  and 
take  the  consequences ;  for  the  penalty  will  not  be  as 
hard  to  pay  in  this  world,  no  matter  what  it  is,  as  it 
will  be  in  the  next  world."  I  shall  cite  but  one  other 
reply  of  those  averse  to  lying.  It  is  stated  with  a 
boy's  candor.  "No,  a  lie  is  never  right,  for  you  are 
always  found  out  and  you  almost  never  feel  half  as 
well  after  it." 

On  the  other  hand,  what  do  the  boys  say  who 
think  that  there  are  circumstances  which  justify  a 
lie  ?  The  views  of  boys  in  this  matter  will  be  a  fair 
statement  probably  of  the  views  of  men,  with  less 
sophistication  and  confusion.  "A  lie  is  right,"  says 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  31 

one  boy,  "only  in  a  case  where  your  life  may  depend 
upon  it,  or  the  lives  of  others."  "Never,"  says  a 
second,  "unless  in  a  case  of  life  and  death  where  the 
truth  might  kill  an  ill  person,  and  when  by  telling 
the  opposite  [what  makes  the  boy  timid  about  saying 
frankly  a  "lie"  ?]  the  shock  might  be  averted  and 
kept  until  the  person  gets  well."  "Although  I  do  n*t 
believe  in  the  principle  that  the  end  justifies  the 
means,"  says  a  third,  "yet  I  think  there  are  times 
when  a  lie  may  do  a  great  deal  of  good.  Consider 
the  implied  lie  or  deceit  of  the  good  person  in  Les 
Miserables,  after  his  guest  had  stolen  his  spoons  or 
silver.  In  such  a  case  a  lie,  it  seems  to  me,  would 
be  all  right."  "Sometimes,"  says  a  fourth,  "to 
shield  a  friend  and  undergo  the  penalty  at  one's  own 
risk."  A  fifth  looks  at  the  matter  in  the  same  way. 
Unselfishness  warrants  falsehood,  he  thinks.  "I  do 
not  think  it  is  right  to  lie  in  behalf  of  one's  self,  but 
I  am  afraid  I  should  lie  if  I  could  save  a  comrade 
from  severe  trouble."  A  sixth  says,  "Yes,  I  do 
[think  a  lie  justifiable]  when  if  you  tell  the  truth 
you  compromise  some  one  near  or  dear  to  you,  or  a 
schoolmate."  "Yes,"  says  another  and  explains,  "If 
one  person  was  very  sick  in  a  family  and  another 
member  of  the  family  died,  if  the  sick  person  should 
ask  if  the  other  had  died,  I  think  that  any  one  would 
be  justified  in  saying,  ~No !"  The  other  boys  answered : 
"In  war."  "Not  under  ordinary  circumstances.  If 
you  can  save  some  one  else  and  not  commit  yourself 
it  is  right."  This  boy  believes  in  unselfish  lying 


32  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

provided  it  is  not  too  expensive.  "If  an  unharmful  lie 
should  save  a  person's  life,  it  would  be  proper." 
"When  you  do  it  for  some  one  else,  never  for  your- 
self." "To  save  a  country." 

It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  two  small  boys 
from  poor  homes  on  the  west  side  downtown  in  New 
York,  were  both  against  lies,  one  "Because  it  is  not 
manly,"  and  the  other,  "Because  it  is  wrong."  Their 
code  of  manliness  and  of  morals  was  higher  than  that 
of  some  of  their  age  who  lived  higher  uptown.  The 
elevation  of  a  man's  ethical  standards  is  not  always 
the  same  as  the  elevation  of  his  social  position. 

The  answers  of  these  boys  cover  very  well  the 
various  circumstances  and  conditions  which  appear 
to  some  men  to  warrant  an  element  of  unveracity  in 
life.  Let  us  frankly  and  as  dispassionately  as  possi- 
ble consider  these.  But  first  as  to  Les  Miserables. 
In  speaking  there  of  Sister  Simplice  as  never  hav- 
ing told  even  a  white  lie,  Victor  Hugo  quotes  a  letter 
from  the  Abbe  Sicard  to  his  deaf  mute  pupil,  Mas- 
sieu,  saying,  "Can  there  be  such  a  thing  as  a  white 
lie  ?  An  innocent  lie  ?  Lying  is  the  absolute  of  evil. 
Lying  a  little  is  not  possible.  The  man  who  lies 
tells  the  whole  lie.  Lying  is  the  face  of  the  fiend  and 
Satan  has  two  names — he  is  called  Satan  and  Lying." 
Victor  Hugo  later  represents  Sister  Simplice  as  lying, 
but  the  Abbe  Sicard's  counsel  stands  none  the  less. 

Now  when  is  a  lie  justifiable,  in  the  view,  that  is, 
of  those  who  think  that  it  can  ever  be  ?  "To  save  a 
life,"  men  and  boys  reply.  "One's  own  life  or  the 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  33 

life  of  another."  The  martyrs  of  course  thought 
otherwise.  "It  is  in  our  power,"  said  Justin  Martyr, 
"when  we  are  examined,  to  deny  that  we  are  Chris- 
tians, but  we  would  not  live  by  telling  a  lie."  A 
certain  self-confessed  liar  and  legally  convicted  adul- 
terer of  our  day,  who  wears  his  hair  long  and  pro- 
fesses art  and  conducts  a  snippet  of  a  periodical,  says 
that  the  martyrs  showed  a  lack  of  humor  in  dying 
for  the  truth,  when  a  trivial  lie  would  have  saved 
them.  The  martyrs,  however,  looked  at  both  false- 
hood and  adultery  from  a  different  point  of  view 
from  this  creature's.  There  were  two  things  which 
are  yet  one, — the  impurity  of  a  lie  and  the  lie 
of  impurity, — which  they  were  entirely  ready  to  pro- 
test against  with  the  supreme  protest  of  their  death. 
Lying  for  another's  life  rather  than  for  one's  own 
differs  only  in  the  matter  of  the  element  of  unselfish- 
ness which  is  Introduced.  But  an  unselfish  purpose 
does  not  remove  or  replace  the  lines  of  moral  cleav- 
age between  right  and  wrong.  To  forge  for  a  friend 
is  as  criminal  as  to  forge  for  one's  self.  The  Jesuit- 
ical principle  asks  no  more  than  the  advocates  of  the 
unselfish  lie  grant.  But  "a  lie  is  not  allowable,"  as 
Augustine  said,  "even  to  save  another  from  injury." 
And  he  asks  whether  if  it  is  right  to  damn  our  souls 
by  a  lie  for  the  sake  of  the  bodily  advantage  of 
others,  we  are  also  to  be  ready  to  commit  adultery 
and  other  sins  for  their  good. 

I  trust  that  if  any  of  you  have  wondered  at  the 
line  of  thought  I  have  been  following  you  will  now 
3 


34  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

begin  to  see  how  fundamental  it  is.  The  same  princi- 
ple which  lets  a  single  lie  into  life  opens  the  door  to 
everything.  Of  course  everything  will  not  follow, 
but  anything  may  follow.  There  is  no  logical  safe- 
guard. The  only  absolute,  secure,  and  rational  prin- 
ciple of  a  right  life  is  the  unqualified  truth. 

It  may  be  a  hard  proposition  to  face — lie  or  let 
a  friend  die,  but,  as  we  shall  see,  the  dilemma  is 
purely  an  imaginary  one,  and  even  if  it  were  real, 
the  only  right  choice  is  truth  at  any  cost  Jeanie 
Deans  had  an  original,  Helen  Walker,  and  Scott 
erected  in  his  garden  a  monument  to  her  memory,  de- 
claring "she  would  not  depart  a  foot's  breadth  from 
the  path  of  truth,  not  even  to  save  her  sister's  life" — • 
but  she  saved  it  by  other  and  legitimate  sacrifices. 
Our  difficulty  here  springs  from  our  entirely  er- 
roneous standards  of  value.  We  consider  life  the 
greatest  treasure.  But  life  is  not  our  richest  pos- 
session. Life  is  not  to  be  held  as  the  one  thing  for 
which  all  else  must  be  sacrificed.  Men  die  for  their 
honor,  for  their  country,  why  should  men  not  die  for 
the  truth  ?  The  truth  is  more  than  any  man's  honor. 
Nay,  rather  his  only  honor  is  in  the  truth  and  the 
love  of  it  even  unto  death.  We  exaggerate  the  value 
of  life  and  we  exaggerate  the  horror  of  death.  "I 
feel  so  strongly  that  death  is  not  an  evil  to  man," 
said  Chinese  Gordon,  "that,  if  I  thought  the  shooting 
of  any  number  of  slave-dealers  would  be  of  avail  in 
stopping  the  slave-trade,  I  would  shoot  them  without 
the  least  compunction,  though  if  a  slave  dealer  was 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  35 

ill  and  it  was  in  my  power  to  cure  him,  I  would  do  my 
best  to  do  so."  But  our  contemptible  theory  is  that 
a  man  must  live.  The  devil  held  that  a  man  would 
sacrifice  anything  for  the  sake  of  his  life,  and  the 
world  at  times  seems  to  have  gone  over  to  the  devil's 
view  as  ethically  correct.  He  has  always  regarded 
a  lie  as  entirely  legitimate  and  sees  no  reason  what- 
ever why  men  should  not  lie  for  a  life's  sake.  But 
men  do  not  need  to  live.  A  moral  code  which  rests 
upon  this  idea  for  its  foundation  is  rotten,  and  to 
surrender  the  truth  which  is  divine  and  eternal  for 
the  sake  of  a  life,  our  own  or  another's,  is  to  choose 
the  devil  instead  of  God  and  to  pollute  the  springs 
of  the  life  that  is  saved  at  such  a  cost.  There  are 
some  contemptuous  modern  verses  on  such  a  view 
which  are  not  too  scornful. 

"  A  man  must  live ! "    We  justify 
Low  shift  and  trick  to  treason  high, 
A  little  vote  for  a  little  gold 
To  a  whole  senate  bought  and  sold, 
With  this  self-evident  reply. 

But  is  it  so?    Pray  tell  me  why 
Life  at  such  cost  you  have  to  buy? 

In  what  religion  were  you  told 

"  A  man  must  live?" 
There  are  times  when  a  man  must  die. 

Imagine  for  a  battle  cry 
From  soldiers  with  a  sword  to  hold, 
From  soldiers  with  the  flag  unrolled, 

The  coward's  whine,  this  liar's  lie, 
"  A  man  must  live  I" 

A   lie   is  not    justifiable   merely   to   save   life. 


36  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

But  it  is  said,  in  war  surely  a  lie  is  justified  by 
the  moral  conscience  of  the  whole  world,  and  if  thus 
in  one  case  a  lie  is  right,  you  can  not  establish  a 
principle  of  absolute  exclusion  against  the  legitimacy 
of  justifiable  falsehood.  Undoubtedly  if  one  lie  is 
right,  many  are,  and  some  people,  any  people  who 
wish  to  do  so,  will  be  able  to  justify  any  lie  they  de- 
sire to  tell.  But  war  does  not  furnish  any  warrant 
for  falsehood.  No  honorable  man  would  lie  in  war. 
A  flag  of  truce  is  most  sacred.  A  parole  is  held  re- 
ligiously inviolate.  Of  course  flags  of  truce  have  been 
abused  by  liars  and  paroles  have  been  broken,  but  the 
moral  sense  of  the  world  abhors  such  enormities. 
War  introduces  standards  and  moral  conceptions  of 
its  own,  but  the  one  thing  which  it  does  not  touch  is 
the  sacred  principle  of  the  truth.  Every  brave  and 
honorable  soldier  would  scorn  to  lie  or  to  use  false- 
hood, or  to  tolerate  it  in  friend  or  foe. 

The  favorite  plea  in  behalf  of  the  justifiable  lie, 
however,  is  drawn  from  the  work  of  the  nurse  and 
the  physician.  The  doctor  is  held  to  be  justified  in 
lying  to  his  patient  when  he  thinks  that  his  lie  may 
hasten  or  procure  the  patient's  recovery.  Now  in 
the  first  place,  no  life  is  worth  a  lie.  What  is  morally 
wrong,  inconsistent  with  the  character  of  God,  and 
destructive  of  society  and  morals,  can  not  be  made 
right  by  its  use  even  to  save  life.  And  in  the  second 
place,  falsehood  is  a  pathological  expedient  whose 
effects  are  utterly  incalculable.  Suppose  the  patient 
to  whom  a  doctor  lies  recovers,  it  is  absolutely  impos- 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  37 

sible  to  show  that  it  was  due  to  the  lie.  Suppose 
that  a  patient  to  whom  a  doctor  tells  the  truth  dies, 
it  is  absolutely  impossible  to  show  that  it  was  due 
to  the  truth.  In  the  third  place,  the  assumption  that 
a  lie  is  ever  necessary  is  purely  unwarranted.  There 
are  a  hundred  ways  of  dealing  wisely  with  patients 
besides  the  way  of  falsehood.  And  in  the  fourth 
place,  the  one  man  whom  we  employ  from  whom  we 
surely  have  a  right  to  the  truth,  is  the  doctor.  If 
I  am  about  to  die,  and  the  doctor  knows  it,  I  have 
a  right  to  know  it.  I  do  not  want  any  doctor  to  lie 
to  me  about  myself  or  about  my  family  or  about  any- 
thing whatever.  He  has  no  right  to  make  himself 
superior  to  God  and  to  deny  to  me  that  which  he 
knows  God  is  affirming.  Of  all  men,  physicians 
ought  to  be  the  supreme  lovers  and  tellers  of  the 
truth.  And  the  best  ones  are.  In  a  recent  address 
to  the  graduating  class  from  the  Moses  Taylor  Hos- 
pital School  for  Nurses  in  Scranton,  Pennsylvania, 
Dr.  Fisher,  the  superintendent  of  the  Presbyterian 
Hospital  in  New  York  City,  took  up  this  question. 
"Be  honest,"  said  he,  "with  your  patients  and  their 
friends.  Very  early  in  the  days  of  my  private  prac- 
tice I  learned  that  as  a  rule  men  and  women  meet 
the  great  crises  of  life  with  firmness  and  courage. 
I  have  witnessed  a  wonderful  calmness  and  relief  in 
a  family  when  I  had  revealed  that  the  end  of  the 
dear  one  was  near,  when  suspense  and  dread  had 
given  place  to  certainty.  This  point  of  truthfulness 
in  the  face  of  a  crisis  is  one  where  a  radical  differ- 


38  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

ence  of  opinion  exists.  Said  one  of  my  medical  ac- 
quaintances, in  substance,  'When  I  was  taking  my 
medical  course  it  was  impressed  upon  me  that  in  most 
critical  cases  it  was  unsafe  to  let  the  patient  know 
his  real  condition,  and  often  unwise  to  let  the  friends 
know  it,  and  that  when  the  physician's  judgment  so 
decided,  any  lie  which  would  satisfy  for  the  time 
being  was  preferable  to  the  truth.  I  accepted  this 
and  for  five  years  acted  upon  it.  Then  I  changed 
my  policy  and  for  fifteen  years  I  have  been  truthful 
with  my  patients,  and  I  have  found  it  in  every  sense 
better,  safer,  wiser.'  ...  A  school  boy  being 
asked,  'What  is  a  lie  ?'  said  'a.  lie  is  an  abomination 
to  the  Lord  and  a  very  present  help  in  time  of 
trouble.'  Not  bad  when  we  consider  that  the  'pres- 
ent' quickly  ends  while  the  'abomination'  remains 
long.  .  .  .  Help  your  patients  and  the  friends 
to  look  at  all  contingencies  from  a  common-sense 
point  of  view.  Believe  in  their  intelligence  and  the 
essential  strength  of  human  nature  to  face  truth,  and, 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  vital  question,  'Be 
honest' '  This  is  the  sort  of  ethics  a  man  wants 
in  his  doctor. 

And  it  is  the  sort  of  ethics  God  wants  in 
every  man.  The  doctor  who  lies  when  he  thinks 
it  is  well  to  do  so  has  entered  a  school  where  his 
thoughts  as  to  when  it  is  well  to  lie  are  likely  to  re- 
ceive a  considerable  development,  and  the  same  thing 
is  true  of  every  man.  If  he  finds  one  reason  for  one 
lie,  he  will  find  another  reason  for  another  and  there 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  39 

is  no  absolute  guarantee  that  he  will  not  be  able  to 
find  a  reason  for  any  lie  he  has  a  sufficiently  strong 
motive  for  telling.  And  all  wrong  conduct  is  just 
falsehood  in  act.  If  falsehood  in  word  is  admitted 
as  sometimes  warranted,  falsehood  in  act  will  be  also, 
and  if  one  falsehood  in  act  is  justifiable,  justification 
can  be  found  without  difficulty  for  anything,  and  in 
consequence  the  man  who  adopts  this  philosophy  and 
who  wishes  to  do  so  can  carry  it  as  far  as  he  will 
and  relax  any  of  the  sanctions  of  morality  which  he 
finds  irksome.  If  any  lie  is  right,  then  there  is  no 
iron  principle  of  unyielding  rectitude  anywhere  in 
life.  This  I  do  not  believe  for  an  instant.  I  believe 
that  the  solid  and  abiding  foundation,  not  to  be  re- 
moved or  played  with  or  modified  or  compromised 
or  evaded  or  relaxed  in  any  way  whatsoever  is  the 
truth,  the  truth  without  qualification,  open  and  void 
of  all  deceit. 

This  is  what  we  are  ever  looking  for  in  men.  We 
want  to  find  for  our  uses  men  who  will  be  true  at  any 
cost  and  who  will  serve  principle,  no  matter  at  what 
personal  price.  This  is  so  in  every  sphere.  I  do 
not  mean  that  there  are  not  many  who  are  looking 
for  dishonest  servants.  The  corporation  which  de- 
sires to  evade  the  statutes  without  risking  prosecu- 
tion is  looking  for  lawyers  who  will  be  clever  and 
unscrupulous  enough  to  show  it  how  it  may  attain 
its  ends,  but  the  corporation  values  these  men  be- 
cause it  believes  they  will  be  true  to  it.  If  they  de- 
ceived it  as  the  corporation  desires  them  to  deceive 


40  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

others,  it  would  cease  to  employ  them.  And  just  as 
a  bad  client  may  desire  a  lawyer  who  will  use  bad 
methods  but  still  be  true  to  his  employer,  so  the  pub- 
lic generally  approves  the  lawyer  who  will  be  true 
to  everybody  and  in  all  things.  For  a  lawyer  to  lie 
is  bad  legal  etiquette.  It  is  also  bad  morals.  Lin- 
coln would  never  do  it.  He  would  not  take  a  bad 
cause  if  he  knew  it,  and  he  would  not  lie  under  any 
circumstances. 

No,  there  is  no  trade  or  profession  in  which  a  lie 
is  a  legitimate  agency.  There  are,  however,  three 
classes  of  people  to  whom  the  defenders  of  the  so- 
called  lie  of  necessity  or  justifiable  lie  urge  that  the 
truth  is  not  owed,  insane  people,  children,  and  crim- 
inals. "It  is  lawful  to  tell  a  lie  to  children  or  to 
madmen,"  said  Jeremy  Taylor,  "because  they,  hav- 
ing no  power  of  judging,  have  no  right  to  the  truth." 
This  glorious  principle  might  be  more  widely  ap- 
plied. In  the  great  enlargement  of  knowledge  almost 
every  man  now  has  special  command  of  some  depart- 
ment where  others  have  no  such  power  of  judging 
as*  he.  Shall  he  therefore  be  at  liberty  to  lie  to  all 
who  are  not  capable  of  judging  in  his  sphere?  It  is 
a  great  pity  that  good  Jeremy  Taylor  did  not  de- 
velop his  idea.  He  wrote  two  famous  books  on  Holy 
Living  and  Holy  Dying.  He  might  have  added 
a  third  on  Holy  Lying,  that  is,  the  proper  sort  of 
lying, —  to  little  children  and  to  the  insane.  As  to 
the  insane,  Dr.  Kirkbride,  long  superintendent  of 
the  Pennyslvania  Hospital  for  the  Insane,  declared, 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  41 

"I  never  think  it  right  to  speak  anything  but  the 
truth."  And  as  to  children,  if  there  is  one  class  of 
people  who  should  be  dealt  with  with  a  special  and 
solicitously  scrupulous  regard  for  the  exact  truth,  it 
is  children.  Of  all  souls  in  the  world,  if  there  may 
be  distinctions  imagined  where  there  are  none,  chil- 
dren's souls  should  be  guarded  from  the  damning 
education  of  lies.  But  children  and  the  insane  do  n't 
know  that  they  are  being  lied  to!  That  seems  to  be 
the  plain  sense  of  Jeremy  Taylor's  idea.  On  that 
basis  the  only  required  justification  of  a  lie  is  that 
it  should  be  a  good  one  and  accomplish  the  end  of 
deceit 

As  to  criminals,  the  difficult  cases  supposed  in 
which  the  telling  of  the  truth  appears  so  hard  and  a 
lie  so  justifiable  are  purely  imaginary.  Not  one 
person  out  of  a  hundred  thousand  ever  faces  such 
problems.  And  those  who  adopt  the  right  principle 
of  the  truth  have  a  right  to  expect  that  they  will  be 
saved  from  such  terrible  situations,  as  they  undoubt- 
edly will.  Some  one  asked  Mr.  Moody  once  what  he 
would  do  if  he  were  to  get  into  such  and  such  a  sit- 
uation. "Would  n't  get  into  it,"  was  his  laconic  re- 
ply. When  some  one  says  to  us,  "What  would  you 
say  if  you  found  yourself  in  such  and  such  a  predica- 
ment?" we  may  likewise  reply,  "God  will  never  let 
me  get  into  such  a  position  if  I  honestly  obey  His 
will  and  follow  His  principles.  If  He  does,  I  can  say 
nothing  if  saying  anything  would  make  trouble. 
And  anyhow,"  we  may  retort,  "I  am  not  obliged 


42  The  Marks  of*  a  Man 

to  worry  myself  over  fictitious  situations."  In  the 
case  of  every  sin  we  can  imagine  conditions  in  which 
it  will  seem  to  be  easier  and  even  more  justifiable  to 
commit  the  sin  than  to  practice  the  opposite  virtue. 
"There  is  no  moral  law,"  says  Tolstoy,  "concerning 
which  we  may  not  devise  a  case  in  which  it  is  diffi- 
cult to-  decide  what  is  moral :  to  disobey  the  law  or 
to  obey  it."  But  devised  or  actual  difficulties  do  not 
justify  us  in  disregarding  the  law.  Truth  in  charac- 
ter is  the  hardest  and  not  the  easiest  thing  in  the 
world,  but  it  is  because  it  is  so  hard  and  unyielding 
that  it  is  the  one  stuff  out  of  which  the  foundation  of 
character  can  be  built. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  the  very  hardness  of 
truth  that  leads  to  lies.  Men  lie  solely  because  of  two 
things,  weakness  and  cowardice.  All  sorts  of 
philosophical  defenses  may  be  set  up  around  the 
justifiable  lie.  The  sole  reason,  when  we  strip  the 
matter  naked,  is  cowardice.  Men  lie  because  they 
are  afraid  to  tell  the  truth  and  take  the  consequences, 
or  to  stand  up  and  say,  "It  is  none  of  your  business ; 
I  will  tell  you  nothing,"  or  more  politely,  "You  must 
trust  me  to  do  what  I  have  to  do  in  the  way  that 
seems  to  me  right  and  best.  I  will  tell  you  nothing 
but  the  truth.  Now  with  that  assurance  let  me  work 
the  matter  out  the  best  way  I  can."  A  lie,  as  Gor- 
don pointed  out,  springs  from  fear.  The  liar  "fears 
his  fellow  more  than  God,  and  thinks  God  is  so  weak 
as  not  to  be  able  to  help  him,  if  he  did  tell  the  exact 
fact.  It  really  is  unbelief  or  distrust  which  induces 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  43 

our  lies,  either  spoken  or  acted."  "A  lie,"  says  Ba- 
con, "fears  God  and  shrinks  from  man."  "If  it  be 
well  weighed,"  says  Montaigne,  "to  say  that  a  man 
lieth  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  he  is  brave  towards 
God  and  a  coward  towards  men."  All  falsehood  in 
a  life  is  evidence  of  cowardice. 

And  all  falsehood  is  not  only  fear,  it  is  also  folly. 
"Whatsoever  convenience  may  be  thought  to  lie  in 
falsehood  and  dissimulation,"  said  Tillotson,  "it  is 
soon  over,  but  the  inconvenience  of  it  is  perpetual 
because  it  brings  a  man  under  an  everlasting  jealousy 
and  suspicion  so  that  he  is  not  believed  when  he 
speaks  the  truth  nor  trusted  when  perhaps  he  means 
honestly."  To  lie  is  not  to  gain  but  to  lose  influence. 
It  is  also  the  beginning  and  not  the  ending  of  diffi- 
culty. The  man  who  tells  the  truth  can  forget  what 
he  has  said  and  be  able  to  repeat  it,  simply  by  telling 
the  truth  again,  but  the  man  who  lies  has  to  remem- 
ber the  particular  lie  he  told,  and  tell  that  again. 
The  truth  is  single  and  unchanging.  Falsehood  is 
duplex  and  shifting  and  variable.  In  the  deaf  and 
dumb  sign  language  the  sign  for  the  truth  is  a  ges- 
ture indicating  a  straight  line  from  the  lips;  the 
sign  for  a  lie  is  the  representation  of  a  crooked,  wav- 
ering line.  The  straight  line  is  one  forever.  The 
crooked  line  may  be  any  one  of  a  million.  A  school- 
boy once  came  to  me  to  ask  help  in  his  moral  troubles 
and  said  that  his  chief  difficulty  was  the  habit  of  ex- 
aggeration, which  was  his  mother's  habit  also.  Per- 
haps she  had  been  a  believer  in  Jeremy  Taylor's  easy 


44  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

theory  of  the  propriety  of  lying  to  children.  "I 
know  it  is  wrong,"  said  the  boy,  "and  also  it  is  so 
very  inconvenient,  for  I  can't  remember  how  I  said 
the  thing  the  first  time,  when  I  have  to  repeat  it." 
Truth  alone  can  make  character  consistent  and  give 
it  rest  and  peace ;  for  as  South,  remarked,  "there  can 
be  no  greater  labor  than  always  dissembling,  there 
being  so  many  ways  by  which  a  smothered  truth  is 
apt  to  blaze  and  break  out." 

And  now  may  we  not  regard  as  settled  this  first 
and  fundamental  principle  of  Christian  character 
that  a  lie  is  always  wrong  and  never  to  be  tol- 
erated, and  that  character,  whether  it  be  great 
and  conspicuous  or  not,  must  at  least  be  all 
true  ?  I  do  not  say  that  those  who  would  allow 
a  lie  under  what  they  regard  as  justifying  circum- 
stances do  not  love  the  truth  and  do  not  recognize 
that  the  truth  is  essential  to  character.  But  I  do  say 
that  logically  their  position  fails  to  give  us  what  we 
require.  In  building  character,  we  need  a  founda- 
tion of  solid  rock.  I  believe  we  have  this  in  the 
truth,  but  if  the  truth  is  not  solid,  if  it  has  holes  in 
it  and  may  be  broken  up  by  men,  then  we  must  find 
something  else  that  will  be  solid  and  unalterable. 
What  else  is  there  ?  Nothing  else  than  the  truth.  To 
believe  that  it  is  holy,  to  have  a  fanaticism  of  devo- 
tion to  it,  to  love  it  and  do  it  and  live  it, — this  will 
put  power  and  nerve  into  the  weakest  men  and  make 
us  children  of  men  who  will  not  lie,  the  sons  of  God 
who  can  not  (Isa.  Ixiii,  8). 


Truth:  No  Lie  Justifiable  45 

I  said  that  even  if  character  is  not  great  it  must 
be  true,  but  the  one  way  that  character  may  be  great 
is  to  be  true.  This  is  true  of  individuals  and  it  is  true, 
as  I  pray  that  this  University  may  deeply  and  in- 
creasingly realize,  of  institutions.  As  'Edward  Thring 
said  at  the  opening  of  the  Uppingham  Schoolroom 
in  1863,  "Something  also  I  would  say  to  the  school 
on  the  subject  of  school  greatness.  I  have  observed 
lately  no  unnatural  desire  to  claim  a  position  among 
English  schools.  Now  you  can  not  claim  it.  It  must 
come.  Indeed,  we  are  very  far  from  wishing  that 
the  school  should  come  forward  on  the  false  ground 
of  mere  increase  of  numbers, — which  may  be  increase 
of  shame,  for  a  mob  is  not  an  army, — or  of  mere 
identity  with  other  schools,  which  is  not  what  has 
made  us  what  we  are.  Yet  be  sure  there  is  the  means 
here  of  being  great.  Have  you  so  soon  forgotten  the 
motto  in  your  head  room: 

"  '  Self -reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control, — 
These  three  alone  lead  life  to  sovereign  power?' 

Yes,  power  must  come  and  there  are  two  ways 
for  it  to  come.  Most  of  all,  and  first,  the  winning  a 
character  for  truth  and  true  honor.  Most  of  all,  that 
no  lie  in  word  or  deed,  no  shams,  no  underhand  de- 
ceits shall  harbor  here, — nothing  that  will  not  bear 
the  light.  Let  this  be  the  school  character,  as  I  trust 
it  is,  and  fear  not,  the  school  is  great.  .  .  .  Who 
shall  set  a  limit  to  the  power  that  goes  forth  from 
here  ?  .  .  .  Why  should  the  prophecy  of  the  lit- 


46  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

tie  that  remains  be  thought  a  vain  dream, — the 
prophecy  that  a  few  years  yet  onwards,  and  by  God's 
blessing,  when  men  think  of  their  youth,  and  talk 
one  with  another  of  truth  and  honor  and  steadfast 
work,  the  name  of  the  school  shall  rise  readily  to 
their  lips,  and  deeds  of  patient  endurance  and  a  char- 
acter hardly  won  for  quiet,  unassuming  trustworthi- 
ness shall  fill  with  honest  pride  the  hearts  of  those 
who  then  shall  be  able  to  say,  'And  I,  too,  was  at  Up- 
pingham.'  Nothing  is  too  great  for  the  power  of  the 
truth  ?"  Or  all  this  can  be  put  in  briefer  words  as 
a  law  of  life.  It  is  so  put  in  the  motto  of  the  Hill 
School,  one  of  the  most  high-minded  of  our  secondary 
schools ;  a  motto  borrowed  from  St.  Paul  and  cut  in 
the  stone  above  the  chancel  in  the  school  chapel, 
" Whatsoever  things  are  true."  That  is  my  whole 
contention  to-night.  "Whatsoever  things  are  true," — 
none  other. 


PURITY 

A  PLEA  FOE  IGNORANCE  AND  HATEED 


Heaven  knows,  when  there  are   so  many  abuses,  we 
ought  to  thank  a  man  who  will  hunt  them  out.    I  will  never 
believe  that  a  man  has  a  real  love  for  the  good  and  beauti- 
ful, except  he   attacks   the  evil  and   the  disgusting   the 
f  moment  he  sees  it !     Therefore  you   must  make  up  your 
!  mind  to  see  me,  with  God's  help,  a  hunter  out  of  abuses  till 
j  the  abuses  cease — only  till  then.    It  is  very  easy  to  turn  our 
"  eyes  away   from    ugly   sights,   and  so  consider   ourselves 
refined. 


As  long  as  your  friend,  or  any  other  man  loves  the 
good,  and  does  it,  and  hates  the  evil  and  flees  from  it,  my 
Catholic  creeds  tell  me  that  the  Spirit  of  Jesus,  "  The 
Word,"  is  teaching  that  man. — MRS.  KINGSLEY,  "Letters  and 
Memories  of  Charles  Kingsley." 


n 
PUHITY 

THE  first  essential  of  Christian  character  is  truth. 
The  second  is  purity.  I  am  entirely  willing  to  call 
it  innocence.  But  whether  we  call  it  purity  or  in- 
nocence or  both,  it  is  simply  truth  in  body,  mind, 
and  soul.  The  pure  man  is  the  man  of  truth  in  his 
passions,  appetites,  habits,  and  will.  Purity  be- 
comes at  once,  accordingly,  in  a  world  like  ours  a 
matter  of  attitude  toward  evil. 

Now  there  are  four  different  attitudes  which  we 
may  take  toward  evil.  The  first  is  indulgence.  This 
is  the  choice  of  weakness  and  sin.  A  young  man  is 
tempted,  and  he  is  not  strong  enough  to  resist,  or  he 
does  not  want  to  resist,  and  he  plunges  in.  It  is  good 
to  see  this  clearly.  There  are  no  other  reasons  for 
the  course  of  indulgence  in  sin  but  these, — cowardice 
and  badness.  Every  life  that  dips  into  this  sink  does 
so  through  feebleness  or  viciousness.  Sometimes 
young  men  excuse  themselves  for  indulgence  on  the 
pretext  that  they  want  to  understand  life,  and  that 
the  only  way  to  understand  it  is  to  experience  it ;  but 
this  is  not  true.  Jesus  understood  life  better  than 
any  man  who  has  ever  lived,  and  he  lived  without 
spot.  Furthermore,  life  is  not  the  good  and  evil  of 
4  49 


50  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

the  world  mixed  up  and  drunk  together.  It  is  the 
good  of  the  world  taken  in,  and  the  evil  rejected. 
The  very  purpose  of  life  is  to  give  us  a  school  in 
which  we  shall  choose  and  know  good,  and  spurn  and 
despise  evil,  and  its  divine  end  is  holiness  and  beauty. 
Indulgence,  from  whatever  motive,  has  the  same  ef- 
fect, namely,  to  tarnish  and  defile,  and  thus  to  de- 
stroy the  very  spirit  and  end  of  true  living.  All  sin, 
when  it  is  full  grown,  bringeth  forth  death. 

The  second  is  indifference.  "I  shall  not  pay  any 
attention  to  evil,"  some  one  says.  "I  shall  just  think 
about  what  is  good,  and  be  busy  with  that,  leaving 
evil  to  itself.  I  do  not  need  to  concern  myself  with 
it,  and  any  passion  against  it  is  bad,  so  that  I  shall 
do  best  simply  to  treat  it  with  indifference."  This 
sounds  fine,  and  philosophical.  But  the  fact  is,  evil 
is  no  simple,  unsophisticated  thing.  There  is  no 
wickedness  or  adroit  scheme  of  deception  which  is 
unknown  to  Satan,  and  he  smiles  at  the  brave  talk 
of  indifference.  He  knows  he  has  within  the  gates 
allies  whom  indifference  can  not  detect  or  expel,  and 
that  they  will  soon  play  havoc  with  the  dream  of  a 
philosophical  neglect  of  evil.  The  sin  that  is  in  our 
own  souls  forbids  indifference.  Indifference,  more- 
over, is  no  attitude  to  take  toward  a  foe  who  is  do- 
ing such  incalculable  damage  in  life.  One  might  as 
well  talk  of  the  manliness  of  the  attitude  of  those 
who  view  with  indifference  all  foreign  invasion  of 
their  soil  and  destruction  of  their  liberties,  or  a  de- 
liberate assault  in  broad  day  by  bandits  upon  their 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Ignorance  51 

homes,  killing  their  women  and  torturing  their  lit- 
tle children.  If  evil  were  honorable,  then  men  might 
let  it  alone.  But  its  very  nature  is  treachery  and 
deceit,  and  all  it  asks  is  indifference  to  enable  it  to 
cover  its  attacks. 

The  third  is  ignorance.  Once  in  Eden,  the  lovely 
story  tells,  there  was  innocence.  Alas,  that  it  was 
ever  lost!  But  it  is  lost,  and  the  taste  of  that  for- 
bidden fruit  is  now  in  every  mouth.  No  one  has 
escaped  it.  The  little  child  begins  its  life  in  such 
apparent  spotlessness  of  innocence,  that  one  almost 
believes  it  is  without  the  capacity  for  evil.  But  sud- 
denly, however  shielded  the  little  life  may  have  been, 
those  who  watch  it  see  to  their  horror  that  evil  has 
touched  it.  The  knowledge  of  wrong  has  come,  per- 
haps the  act  of  wrong  itself,  and  thenceforward  the 
child  is  participant  in  the  perpetual  conflict.  No  one 
can  escape  the  knowledge  of  evil.  Yet,  so  far  as  it 
is  possible,  ignorance  is  the  right  attitude  to  take 
toward  it.  Such  ignorance  is  hot  weakness,  but 
power,  beauty,  joy,  freedom.  Bitter  is  the  day  when 
the  needless  knowledge  of  evil  creeps  into  the  soul, 
and  thenceforth  there  are  reticences,  blushes  of 
shame,  concealments,  averted  eyes,  and  the  misery 
of  a  furtive  life.  It  is  better  for  the  soul  to  be  free, 
to  have  a  stock  of  knowledge  so  pure  and  unsullied 
that  to  expose  it  at  noonday  in  a  public  place  would 
cause  no  shame. 

The  fourth  is  indignation.  However  blessedly 
great  our  ignorance  of  evil  may  be,  it  can  not  be  ab- 


52  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

solute.  The  evil  in  our  own  souls,  and  the  terrible 
evil  of  our  world,  force  themselves  upon  us.  Let  us 
receive  them  with  indignation.  What  right  have 
they  here,  lurking  in  our  hearts  and  defiling  the 
earth,  filling  it  with  shame  and  sorrow  and  anguish  ? 
But  first  in  our  own  hearts.  This  is  the  evil  to  be 
scorned  and  defeated  first.  Unless  this  is  done,  what 
right  have  we  to  flame  against  the  evil  in  others  ? 
When  filled  with  indignation  against  the  evil  of  our 
own  hearts,  and  resolutely  warring  against  it,  we  may 
justly  go  out  also  against  the  world's  evil,  and  do  our 
part  there  to  resist  the  devil  and  to  conquer  lies. 

Of  these  four  attitudes  the  principle  of  purity 
selects  two  which  it  presses  upon  men  of  Christian 
character  and  requires  of  them.  I  propose  to  speak 
of  these  two  and  what  I  have  to  say  in  behalf  of 
purity  may  be  frankly  described  as  a  plea  in  behalf 
of  ignorance  and  a  plea  in  behalf  of  hatred. 

As  to  the  plea  in  behalf  of  ignorance  the  common 
notion  is  that  no  such  plea  can  be  made.  The  popu- 
lar proverb  declares  that  knowledge  is  power.  But 
like  many  other  popular  proverbs  this  one  is  half  a 
truth  and  half  a  lie.  Sometimes,  surely,  knowledge 
is  power,  but  sometimes,  as  surely,  knowledge  is  not 
power,  but  weakness,  or  death,  or  worse  than  death. 
Whether  knowledge  is  power  or  not  depends  upon 
what  the  objects  of  knowledge  are.  One  might  as 
truly  say  that  all  eating  is  strength  as  to  say  that  all 
knowledge  is  power.  Some  food  breeds  disease  or 
weakness  or  death.  So  likewise  some  knowledge  is 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Ignorance  53 

morally  suicidal.    Toward  such  knowledge  my  con- 
tention is  that  ignorance  is  the  only  manliness. 

If  it  were  appropriate  or  necessary  to  take  a  text 
for  such  a  plea  in  behalf  of  ignorance,  I  think  I 
should  select  from  many  the  available  words  of  Paul 
in  his  letter  to  the  Romans :  "I  would  have  you  wise 
unto  that  which  is  good  and  simple  [i.  e.,  innocent] 
unto  that  which  is  evil."  No  words  could  present 
more  clearly  the  great  issue  between  good  and  evil 
and  the  opposite  attitudes  which  Christian  men 
should  take  up  toward  them. 

Now  men  do  not  like  to  be  driven  to  sharp  al- 
ternatives and  mutually  exclusive  choices.  They  like 
to  gloss  over  the  lines  of  division  so  as  not  to  have 
to  make  decisive  choice.  But  in  this  matter  they 
can  not  escape.  In  his  essay,  The  Witt  to  Be- 
lieve, Professor  James  arranges  the  options  which 
are  offered  to  men,  the  choices  between  conflicting 
hypotheses  or  principles,  into  three  groups.  The 
first  group  is  made  up  of  options  which  are  living  or 
dead.  "A  living  option,"  says  he,  "is  one  in  which 
both  hypotheses  are  live  ones.  If  I  say  to  you,  'Be 
a  theosophist  or  be  a  Mohammedan,'  it  is  probably 
a  dead  option,  because  for  you  neither  option  is  likely 
to  be  alive.  But  if  I  say  'Be  an  agnostic  or  a  Chris- 
tian,' it  is  otherwise,"  for  you  are  pretty  sure,  trained 
as  you  are,  to  be  one  or  the  other  of  these.  The  sec- 
ond kind  of  option  is  forced  or  avoidable.  If  you 
come  to  where  three  roads  diverge,  it  is  no  forced 
option  which  faces  you  between  the  left  and  the 


54  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

right.  You  may  choose  the  center  road,  but  if  there 
are  only  two  roads  and  you  have  to  go  on,  the  option 
is  forced.  "If  I  say  to  you,"  says  Professor  James, 
"  'Choose  between  going  out  with  your  umbrella  or 
without  it,'  I  do  not  offer  you  a  genuine  option,  for 
it  is  not  forced.  You  can  easily  avoid  it  by  not  go- 
ing out  at  all.  .  .  .  But  if  I  say,  'Either  accept 
this  truth  or  go  without  it,'  I  put  on  you  a  forced 
option,  for  there  is  no  standing  place  outside  of  the 
alternative.  Every  dilemma  based  on  a  complete 
logical  disjunction,  with  no  possibility  of  not  choos- 
ing, is  an  option  of  this  forced  kind."  And  thirdly, 
options  are  trivial  or  momentous.  Some  options  are 
living  and  forced  which  yet  are  so  petty  as  to  be  of 
no  consequence.  But  other  options  are  momentous. 
"If  I  were  Dr.  Nansen,"  to  use  Professor  James's 
illustration,  "and  proposed  to  you  to  join  my  North 
Pole  expedition,  your  option  would  be  momentous; 
for  this  would  probably  be  your  only  similar  oppor- 
tunity, and  your  choice  now  would  either  exclude  you 
from  the  North  Pole  sort  of  immortality  altogether, 
or  put  at  least  the  chance  of  it  into  your  hands.  He 
who  refuses  to  embrace  a  unique  opportunity  loses 
the  prize  as  surely  as  if  he  tried  and  failed.  Per 
contra,  the  option  is  trivial  when  the  opportunity  is 
not  unique,  when  the  stake  is  insignificant,  or  when 
the  decision  is  reversible  if  it  later  prove  unwise." 

Now  the  choice  between  good  and  evil,  that 
is  the  choice  between  attitudes  toward  evil,  is  a 
genuine  option.  It  is  a  living  option.  No  more 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Ignorance  55 

vital  problem  confronts  us.  Everything  for  a 
man  hangs  on  his  choice  here.  It  is  a  forced 
option.  No  man  can  escape  a  choice.  No  choice 
is  itself  a  choice.  "He  that  is  not  for  Me,"  said 
Jesus,  "is  against  Me."  Every  one  either  de- 
liberately or  unconsciously  is  arraying  himself  and 
defining  a  position  toward  good  and  evil.  And  it  is 
a  momentous  choice,  the  one  great  choice  of  life,  af- 
fecting all  our  intellectual  judgments,  our  tastes,  our 
friendships,  our  capacities  for  unselfishness  and  for 
service. 

The  alternatives  are  strictly  limited  and  exclu- 
sive. Men  may  try  to  play  with  both,  but  it  is  a 
futile  game.  Our  Lord  always  insisted  that  at  bot- 
tom every  man  was  ruled  by  one  or  the  other  of  two 
contradictory  principles.  He  allowed  for  black  and 
white,  goats  and  sheep, — no  neutral  tint,  no  hybrids. 
However  hard  it  is  for  us  to  slice  society  in  two, 
Jesus  says  it  will  be  done  at  the  judgment.  There 
will  be  two  groups,  not  twenty,  and  every  man  is  in 
one  or  the  other  of  these  two  groups  now. 

Under  the  Old  Testament  dispensation,  the  cere- 
monial law  ran  a  dividing  line  right  across  life  and 
all  the  activities  and  nourishments  and  interests  of 
life.  Some  it  pronounced  clean  and  others  unclean. 
Now  between  many  of  the  things  thus  separated 
there  was  no  real  difference  whatever.  God  did  not 
deem  some  beasts  and  places  and  acts,  which  were 
differentiated  by  the  law,  of  unequal  moral  quality. 
These  were  kindergarten  days.  What  all  this  old 


56  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

ceremonial  was  set  up  for  was  its  moral  and  educa- 
tional end.  God  was  endeavoring  to  create  the  sense 
of  moral  distinction,  to  lead  men  to  see  that  there 
are  moral  choices  which  are  unavoidable,  and  moral 
chasms  which  are  unbridgeable,  and  to  drive  them  at 
last  to  a  realization  of  the  eternal  contradiction  be- 
tween good  and  evil  and  of  the  necessity  of  utterly 
divergent  attitudes  toward  them. 

And  this  option  is  momentous  not  alone  in  the 
sense  that  such  infinite  issues  are  involved,  but  also 
in  the  sense  that  in  one  moment  a  man's  choico  may 
be  fixed  forever.  With  never  so  much  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  ceaseless  mercy  and  love  of  God,  and 
the  patient  love  and  wooing  of  Christ,  there  is  still  a 
determinism  of  character  with  which  no  man  dare 
trifle.  We  may  say  that  we  can  turn  when  we  wish 
to  turn,  but  we  are  making  it  certain  that  we  shall 
not  really  wish  to  turn.  With  many  doubtless  the 
determination  of  their  choice  is  spread  out  over 
years.  Just  as  surely  with  many  others  one  decisive 
act  or  leaning:  settles  the  whole  matter  forever. 


"Once  to  every  man  and  nation  comes  the  moment  to  de- 
cide, 

In  the  strife  of  Truth  with  Falsehood,  for  the  good  or  evil 
side  ; 

Some  great  cause,  God's  new  Messiah,  offering  each  the 
bloom  or  blight, 

Parts  the  goats  upon  the  left  hand,  and  the  sheep  upon  the 
right, 

And  the  choice  goes  by  forever  'twixt  that  darkness  and 
that  light." 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Ignorance  57 

When  the  matter  is  put  this  way,  of  course,  every 
gentleman  will  say  at  once,  "Why  to  be  sure  I  choose 
good.  Let  me  be  counted  on  that  side."  Very  well, 
what  then  shall  be  our  attitude  toward  evil?  And 
here  I  make  my  plea  first  for  ignorance.  There  are 
philosophers  who  say  that  we  can  search  for  the  truth 
but  can  never  know  that  we  have  found  it,  and  that 
the  search  is  all  that  we  need.  I  do  not  hold  to  that 
philosophy;  I  believe  that  we  can  get  along  both 
without  seeking  for  and  without  finding  evil.  It  is 
enough  for  us  to  know  that  it  is,  without  prying  into 
what  it  is.  Toward  evil,  man  is  at  his  highest  when 
he  is  innocent  and  pure,  when  he  has  nothing  to  con- 
ceal. In  protesting  against  gambling  and  the  shame 
of  possessing  money  acquired  by  gambling,  Phillips 
Brooks,  in  his  sermon  on  The  Choice  Young  Man, 
protests  also  against  all  dark  things,  the  possession 
of  dollars  whose  history  can  not  be  told,  the  posses- 
sion of  knowledge  which  the  sense  of  shame  conceals. 
"To  keep  clear  of  concealment,  to  keep  clear  of  the 
need  of  concealment,  to  do  nothing  which  he  might 
not  do  out  on  the  middle  of  Boston  Common  at  noon- 
day,— I  can  not  say  how  more  and  more  that  seems 
to  me  to  be  the  glory  of  a  young  man's  life.  It  is  an 
awful,  hour  when  the  first  necessity  of  hiding  any- 
thing conies.  The  whole  life  is  different  thence- 
forth. When  there  are  questions  to"  be  feared  and 
eyes  to  be  avoided  and  subjects  which  must  not  be 
touched,  then  the  bloom  of  life  is  gone.  Put  off  that 
day  as  long  as  possible.  Put  it  off  forever  if  you 


58  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

can."  ~No  money  whose  history  can  not  be  told. 
IS'o  knowledge  that  can  not  be  shared  with  all 
the  world. 

I  believe  in  such  an  attitude  of  ignorance  toward 
evil,  first  of  all  because  such  ignorance  is  power.  Men 
often  justify  the  knowledge  of  evil  because  it  is  es- 
sential to  influence,  as  they  say,  and  they  advise 
young  men  to  become  personally  informed  about  evil 
in  order  to  be  able  to  correct  it  intelligently.  As 
though  no  physician  were  competent  to  set  a  broken 
arm  who  had  not  first  broken  his  own !  As  though 
no  man  could  put  out  a  fire  in  his  neighbor's  house 
who  had  not  qualified  by  committing  arson  in  his 
own!  There  is  a  power  possessed  by  the  reformed 
drunkard  but  no  power  of  experienced  sin  is  as  great 
as  the  power  of  innocence  that  has  triumphed  over 
sin.  Who  is  the  greatest  and  mightiest  of  men  ?  Who 
but  the  One  who  knew  no  sin  and  whom  no  personal 
acquaintance  with  transgression  had  stained.  And 
the  great  picture  of  power  is  the  scene  in  the  Tem- 
ple when,  with  eyes  aglow  and  a  whip  of  small  cords 
in  His  hands,  the  Incarnate  Innocence  drove  out  of 
His  Father's  Temple  the  hucksters  who  made  it  a 
place  of  merchandise  and  a  den  of  thieves.  The  little 
child  has  ever  been  and  is  the  master  of  the  world. 
He  holds  the  supreme  power  in  his  holy  hands.  Evil 
men  pause  and  bow  before  the  might  of  his  inno- 
cence. It  is  not  the  man  who  has  gone  down  and 
filled  his  memory  and  imagination  with  the  pictures 
of  evil,  much  less  the  man  who  has  scarred  body  and 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Ignorance  59 

soul  with  the  deeds  of  evil,  who  has  the  truest  secret 
of  strength.  It  is  Sir  Galahad : 

"  My  good  blade  carves  the  casques  of  men, 

My  tough  lanco  thrusteth  sure, 
My  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten 
Because  my  heart  is  pure.  " 

It  is  not  the  bad  man,  nor  the  good  man  who  was 
bad,  nor  the  good  man  who  was  never  bad  but  who 
knows  about  badness,  who  is  the  strongest  man,  but 
the  good  man  v,rhose  heart  is  clean. 

In  the  second  place  such  ignorance  is  mental  free- 
dom. Evil  sticks  to  the  mind  with  a  tenacity  that 
is  simply  devilish.  The  man  who  deliberately  en- 
larges his  stock  of  knowledge  of  evil  is  passing  him- 
self under  slavery.  What  evil  we  have  to  meet  in 
the  path  of  clear  duty  we  may  confidently  expect 
God  to  enable  us  to  meet  without  harm  to  our  souls. 
He  will  surround  us  with  such  protection  and  so  im- 
munize our  memories  against  contagion  as  to  bring 
us  out  of  such  contact  with  evil  unpolluted.  But 
no  man  can  gain  the  knowledge  of  evil  out  of  pruri- 
ent or  idle  curiosity  without  bearing  the  marks  of 
it  and  feeling  forever  its  tyranny.  I  knew  of  a  man 
once  who  was  doctor  on  a  reform-school  ship  in  New 
York  Harbor.  There  were  300  boys  and  they  knew  all 
evil,  some  of  the  officers  did  not  live  in  their  thoughts 
on  a  plane  very  far  above  the  boys.  What  he  heard 
there,  he  told  me,  though  it  was  years  before,  clung 
to  him  so  that  it  was  perpetual  battle  with  him  to 
counteract  anji  annul  those  memories  by  pure  and 


60  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

holy  thoughts.  It  had  been  duty  to  him  on  the  ship 
and  he  was  not  subdued  by  what  had  fastened  on 
him  in  the  way  of  his  duty,  but  it  was  duty  sur- 
rounded  by  devilish  difficulties.  I  knew  another 
man  who  was  urged  once  to  go  down  and  see  the 
seamy  side  of  life  in  New  York.  He  went.  A 
friend  who  was  a  newspaper  man  showed  him  what 
there  was  to  see.  I  asked  him  when  he  came  back  if 
it  had  been  a  good  experience.  It  had  been  such  an 
experience,  he  told  me,  as  he  would  gladly  give  a 
hand  to  obliterate.  But  the  knowledge  was  his  now 
and  he  could  not  rid  himself  of  it.  That  is  the  mis- 
chief about  memory.  The  harder  we  try  to  forget, 
the  more  tenaciously  does  the  detested  object  cling. 
A  man  can  not  will  to  forget.  That  is  equivalent  to 
willing  to  remember.  There  is  no  supremer  folly 
than  to  think  that  we  can  acquire  knowledge  and 
then  be  as  free  as  we  were  before.  All  knowledge 
binds,  and  the  needless  knowledge  of  evil  not  only 
destroys  power,  it  imposes  slavery.  Mr.  Kipling  has 
put  it  in  a  song : 

"  To  the   legion  of  the  lost  ones,  to  the  cohort  of  the 

damned, 

To  my  brethren  in  their  sorrows  over  seas, 
Sings  a  gentleman  of  England,  cleanly  bred,  machinely 

crammed, 
And  a  trooper  of  tho  Empress,  if  you  please. 

"  We  have  done  with  Hope  and  Honor,  we  are  lost  to  Love 

and  Truth, 

We  are  dropping  down  the  ladder  rung  by  rung, 
And  the  measure  of  our  torment  is  the  measure  of  our 

youth, 
God  help  us  for  we  knew  the  worst  too  young  1 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Ignorance  61 

"  Our  shame  is  clean  repentance  for  the  crime  that  brought 

the  sentence, 

Our  pride  it  is  to  know  no  spur  of  pride, 
And  the  Curse  of  Eeuben  holds  us  till  an  alien  land  en- 
folds us 
And  we  die  and  none  can  tell  Them  where  we  died. 

"  We're  poor  little  lambs  who've  lost  their  way, 

Baa,  baa,  baa ; 
We're  little  black  sheep  who've  gone  astray, 

Baa-aa-aa ; 

Gentlemen  rankers  out  on  the  spree, 
Damned  from  here  to  Eternity, 
God  ha'  mercy  on  such  as  we, 
Baa!  Yah!  Bah  1" 

Ignorance  is  freedom  from  all  this.  Men,  young 
or  old,  do  not  need  to  know  the  worst,  or  to  feel  the 
slavery  which  the  knowledge  of  the  worst  brings. 
And  ignorance  is  not  only  freedom  from  slavery.  It 
is  freedom  for  work.  When  the  mind  is  loaded  with 
evil  knowledge  it  is  incapable  of  activities  and  serv- 
ices for  which  the  pure  mind  is  free.  And  a  free 
mind,  as  Channing  maintained,  is  the  great  good  of 
Christianity  and  the  great  essential  of  Christian 
manhood.  "I  call  that  mind  free,"  declared  he, 
"which  masters  the  senses,  which  protects  itself 
against  animal  appetites,  which  contemns  pleasure 
and  pain  in  comparison  with  its  own  energy,  which 
penetrates  beneath  the  body  and  recognizes  its  own 
reality  and  greatness,  which  passes  life  not  in  asking 
what  it  shall  eat  or  drink,  but  in  hungering,  thirst- 
ing, and  seeking  after  righteousness.  I  call  that 
mind  free  which  escapes  the  bondage  of  matter, 


62  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

\vhich  instead  of  stopping  at  the  material  universe 
and  making  it  a  prison  wall,  passes  beyond  it  to  the 
Author,  and  finds  in  the  radiant  signatures  which  it 
everywhere  bears  of  the  Infinite  Spirit,  helps  to  its 
own  spiritual  enlargement.  ...  I  call  that 
mind  free  which  through  confidence  in  God  and  in 
the  power  of  virtue,  has  cast  off  all"  fear  but  that  of 
wrong  doing,  which  no  menace  or  peril  can  enthrall. 
.  .  .  Such  is  the  spirit  of  freedom  which  Christ 
came  to  give.  This  is  the  great  good  of  Christianity, 
nor  can  we  conceive  a  greater  within  the  gift  of 
God."  But  this  gift  is  not  for  the  man  who  subjects 
his  mind  to  the  knowledge  of  evil.  That  is  the  road 
away  from  freedom.  And  the  Christian  man  must 
be  free,  aloof  from  darkness,  ready  for  God's  will. 

"A  door  clanks  loose,  the  gust  beats  by, 

The  chairs  stand  plain  about ; 
Upon  the  curving  mantle  high 

The  carved  heads  stand  out. 
The  maids  go  down  to  brew  and  bake, 
And  on  the  dark  stairs  make 

A  clatter,  sudden,  shrill — 
Lord,  here  am  I 

Clear  of  the  night  and  ready  for  Thy  will." 

He  who  would  stand  thus,  must  stand  off  from  evil. 
Thirdly,  I  believe  in  the  attitude  of  ignorance 
because  it  alone  holds  the  secret  of  life's  freshness 
and  joy.  Men  do  not  believe  this.  The  very  reason 
they  go  after  evil  is  because  of  the  interest  it  is  sup- 
posed to  give  to  life.  Mere  goodness  and  the  simple 
life  and  thoughts  of  goodness  they  think  to  be  tame 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Ignorance  63 

and  to  need  the  zest  and  piquancy  to  be  found  alone 
in  the  spice  of  evil.  But  this  is  folly.  Nothing  is 
more  deadly  monotonous  than  evil.  It  is  always  the 
same  stale  story.  In  a  notable  sermon,  Dr.  W.  R. 
Richards  discusses  what  he  calls  "the  monotony  of 
sin/'  and  he  imagines  some  ancient  Babylonian  vis- 
iting modern  New  York  and  being  taken  about  to 
see  the  sights.  His  host  shows  him  the  great  build- 
ings and  bridges  and  engineering  achievements  and 
the  man  from  the  ancient  time  is  filled  with  wonder 
and  surprise.  And  then  in  the  evening  the  New 
Yorker,  who  had  reserved  the  exhibition  of  sin  in 
its  most  seductive  and  fascinating  guise  to  crown  the 
day,  is  non-plussed  when  the  Babylonian  yawns  and 
exclaims,  "O,  there  is  nothing  new  here.  We  had 
all  this  in  Babylon  three  thousand  years  ago."  In- 
deed there  is  nothing  new  in  sin.  Its  new  forms  are 
simply  revivals  of  old  forms.  All  there  is  in  sin  was 
in  the  first  sin.  It  has  been  a  story  of  stale  repeti- 
tion ever  since. 

The  silly  vice  of  profanity  illustrates  itKe  monot- 
ony of  sin.  Men  begin  to  swear  as  an  enrichment 
of  the  vocabulary.  But  nothing  so  contracts  and  im- 
poverishes human  speech.  After  a  little  while  the 
profane  man  becomes  the  slave  of  a  dozen  oaths,  per- 
haps of  only  one  or  two.  All  the  emotions  which  his 
soul  feels,  all  the  judgments  of  his  intellect,  have  to 
be  expressed  in  those  few  words.  I  have  a  friend  who 
says  that  he  knows  a  setter  dog  who  has  more  differ- 
ent ways  of  expressing  emotions  and  ideas  with  his 


64  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

tail  than  some  men  have  with  all  the  resources  of 
the  English  language  at  their  disposal.  The  knowl- 
edge of  profane  speech  is  the  surest  way  to  the  loss 
of  freshness  and  richness  of  language. 

And  there  never  was  a  worse  devil's  lie  than  the 
declaration  that  sin  is  novel  and  interesting  and  viva- 
cious. All  the  variety  there  is  in  sin  is  in  the  first 
act  of  sin.  The  freshness  goes  then  and  all  the  rest 
is  stale  and  dreary.  In  a  little  volume  of  poems  by 
George  Arnold,  who  was  a  writer  in  New  York  in 
the  Civil  War  days,  are  some  lines  entitled  The 
Lees  of  Life,  which  tell  wearily  enough  the  tale  of 
the  emptiness  and  insipidity  of  the  knowledge  which 
young  men  so  often  think  is  so  invitingly  interesting 
ai>d  entertaining. 

"I  have  had  my  will, 

Tasted  every  pleasure, 
I  have  drunk  my  fill 

Of  the  purple  measure, 
Life  has  lost  its  zest, 
Sorrow  is  my  guest, 

O,  the  lees  are  bitter,  bitter! 
Give  me  rest! 

Love  once  filled  the  bowl, 
Running  o'er  with  blisses, 

Made  my  very  soul 
Drunk  with  crimson  kisses, 

But  I  drank  it  dry, 

Love  has  passed  me  by, 
O,  the  lees  are  bitter,  bitter  I 

Let  me  die!" 

Because  life  ought  to  be  rich  and  ever  fresh  and 
new,  I  believe  in  ignorance  of  evil. 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Ignorance  65 

And  in  the  fourth  place,  it  is  ignorance  of  evil 
which  gives  life  its  beauty  and  sweetness.  There  is 
a  sad  beauty  in  the  ruined  life  which  has  been  re- 
deemed and  which  in  the  memory  of  its  past  waste 
and  evil  goes  softly  all  the  rest  of  its  days,  but  no  re- 
claimed soul  can  ever  have  the  beauty  which  lies  as 
a  holy  glory  over  the  life  of  a  little  spotless  child. 
Would  the  Temple  have  been  lovelier  if  it  had  once 
been  a  brothel  ?  I  remember  well  the  words  which 
stood  over  the  pulpit  recess  in  the  old  Pennsylvania 
church  to  which  I  went  as  a  boy.  "Holiness  becom- 
eth  Thine  House,  O  Lord,  forever;" — not  fragment- 
arily.  And  the  temple  of  God  which  we  are  is 
not  made  fairer  in  God's  eyes  or  man's  by  first  pol- 
luting the  walls  with  evil  adornments  and  then  cov- 
ering them  over  with  holiness.  God  will  take  his 
men  broken  and  defiled  if  He  can  not  get  them  other- 
wise, and  He  will  do  the  best  He  can  with  them  by 
forgiveness  and  strength,  but 

"  Yes,  Thou  forgivest,  but  with  all  forgiving 
Canst  not  renew  mine  innocence  again." 

Let  us  seek  to  keep  that  innocence,  the  purity  of 
flesh  of  the  little  child,  the  gracious  honesty  of  whole- 
ness, uncorroded  and  unstained. 

And  lastly,  I  argue  in  behalf  of  the  attitude  of 
ignorance  that  it  furnishes  the  basis  of  the  best  and 
truest  fellowship.  Coming  down  the  China  Sea 
some  years  ago  on  a  coast-trade  steamer,  I  sat  at  the 
dinner  table  in  the  saloon  one  evening  after  every 
5 


66  The  Marks  of  a  .Man 

one  else  had  gone  up  on  deck,  talking  to  the  chief 
officer.  He  pushed  his  tobacco  and  whisky  bottle  and 
some  soda  across  to  me  and  cordially  invited  me 
to  share  them  with  him.  When  I  thanked  him  and 
declined,  he  looked  up  in  a  frank,  cordial  way  and 
said,  "Now,  Mr.  Speer,  I  hope  you  won't  mind  my 
saying  so,  but  I  don't  feel  on  an  entirely  friendly 
and  common  basis  with  a  man  until  he  drinks  and 
smokes  with  me."  Well,  that  is  one  view, — that  the 
roots  of  human  fellowship  and  of  intellectual  com- 
munion run  into  the  stomach.  But  the  fellowship 
that  has  no  higher  sanctions  and  communities  than 
a  common  taste  for  a  particular  brand  of  whisky  or 
tobacco  rests  on  very  precarious  grounds.  Human  as- 
sociations ought  to  be  lifted  to  the  highest  and  holiest 
planes  and  men  should  have  higher  relationships  than 
those  which  spring  from  mere  animal  desire.  The  free 
mind  is  above  them.  And  men  should  shrink  from 
the  fellowship  which  resides  in  the  common  knowl- 
edge of  evil,  the  enjoyment  of  foul  stories,  the  sing- 
ing of  low  songs.  The  story  told  of  Coleridge  Patte- 
son  shows  how  the  true  man  will  feel  and  act.  It 
was  at  the  annual  dinner  of  the  cricket  eleven  and 
the  eight  of  the  boat  at  Eton.  "A  custom  had  arisen 
among  some  of  the  boys  of  singing  offensive  songs 
on  this  occasion,"  says  his  biographer,  "and  Coley, 
who  as  second  of  the  eleven  stood  in  the  position  of 
one  of  the  entertainers,  gave  notice  beforehand  that 
he  was  not  going  to  tolerate  anything  of  the  sort. 
One  of  the  boys,  however,  began  to  sing  something 
objectionable.  Coley  called  out,  'If  that  does  not- 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Ignorance  67 

stop,  I  shall  leave  the  room/  and  as  no  notice  was 
taken  he  actually  went  away  with  a  few  other  lads. 
He  afterwards  found  that,  as  he  said,  'fellows  who 
could  not  understand  such  feelings  thought  him  af- 
fected,' and  he  felt  himself  obliged  to  send  word  to 
the  captain  that  unless  an  apology  was  made,  he 
should  leave  the  eleven — no  small  sacrifice,  consider- 
ing what  cricket  was  to  him;  but  the  gentlemanlike 
and  proper  feeling  of  the  better  style  of  boys  pre- 
vailed, and  the  eleven  knew  their  own  interests  too 
well  to  part  with  him,  so  the  apology  was  made,  and 
he  retained  his  position."  A  somewhat  similar  and 
quite  familiar  story  is  told  of  General  Grant.  In 
one  of  the  Virginia  campaigns  he  and  his  staff  were 
gathered  one  evening  in  a  country  farm-house,  the 
officers  about  the  fire  and  Grant  a  little  removed 
with  his  chin  on  his  breast,  sitting  in  silence.  The 
officers  were  telling  stories.  Presently  one  of  them 
said,  "I  have  a  very  good  story  to  tell,"  and  then  to 
indicate  what  was  coming  he  added,  "I  think  there 
are  no  ladies  here."  There  was  an  expectant  ripple 
of  laughter,  in  the  midst  of  which  General  Grant 
looked  up  and  quietly  remarked,  "No,  but  there  are 
gentlemen  here."  The  story  was  not  told.  Do  we 
need  argument  to  show  us  that  gentlemen  must  be  of 
clean  hearts,  that  the  less  of  evil  they  know  the 
broader  is  the  basis  of  noble  fellowship  among  them  ? 
It  is  the  pure  in  heart  who  are  to  see  God,  and  it  is 
the  pure  in  heart  who  are  to  know  what  the  richest 
friendship  is  among  men. 


68  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

It  may  be  that  there  are  some  who  will  assent  to 
all  that  has  been  said  but  who  will  reply  sadly,  "Alas, 
our  sorrow  is  that  we  know.  We  wish  we  were  in- 
nocent again.  Is  there  no  hope  for  us  ?"  Yes,  thank 
God,  there  is.  Jesus  Christ  came  to  this  end.  If  in 
living  faith  in  Him,  the  man  who  is  bound  under  the 
evil  knowledge  will  go  off  alone  and  pray  in  secret 
to  the  Father  who  heareth,  he  can  find  that  which 
he  seeks,  and  that  will  take  place  in  him  which  took 
place  in  Naaman  the  Syrian  who  went  down  a  leper 
as  white  as  snow  and  dipped  himself  seven  times  in 
the  Jordan  and  his  flesh  came  upon  him  again  as  it 
had  been  the  flesh  of  a  little  child. 

I  need  not  add  a  word  to  what  I  have  said,  I 
hope,  in  further  justification  of  a  plea  in  behalf  of 
that  ignorance  of  evil  which  is  power  and  freedom 
and  freshness  and  beauty  and  the  secret  of  fellowship. 
And  what  has  been  already  implied  of  the  deadly 
effects  of  too  close  acqaintance  with  evil,  will  war- 
rant, I  believe,  my  going  on  to  make  a  further  plea 
in  behalf  of  hatred  of  evil  as  an  essential  of  Chris- 
tian character.  It  is  as  easy  to  find  a  text  for  this 
as  for  the  plea  for  ignorance.  "Be  ye  angry,"  says 
Paul.  "There  is  a  time  to  hate,"  says  the  preacher. 

It  was  said  of  Arnold  of  Rugby  by  his  worshiper 
and  biographer,  Dean  Stanley,  that  "no  one  could 
know  him  even  a  little  and  not  be  struck  by  his  abso- 
lute wrestling  with  evil  and,  with  the  feeling  of  God's 
help  on  his  side,  scorning  as  well  as  hating  it." 
Some  people  have  the  feeling  that  this  was  a  heathen 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Hatred  69 

strain  in  Arnold,  or  that  at  any  rate  it  was  more 
akin  to  the  religious  feeling  of  the  Old  Dispensation. 
There  was  undoubtedly  a  great  deal  of  this  in  the 
Old  Testament.  The  wrath  of  Moses  at  Dathan  and 
Abiram  when  at  his  word,  in  the  name  of  Jehovah, 
the  ground  opened  and  swallowed  them  up  with  their 
families,  Samuel  hewing  Agag  to  pieces  before  the 
Lord  in  Gilgal,  Elijah  with  the  prophets  of  Baal  at 
the  holocaust  of  Kishon, — theser  are  only  a  few  of  the 
many  illustrations  of  noble  anger  with  which  the  Old 
Testament  abounds.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that 
the  essential  principle  of  such  anger  at  sin  was  of 
the  old  order  and  was  done  away  by  Christianity. 
Wrath  at  sin  is  part  of  those  eternal  Christian  prin- 
ciples which  were  before  the  Old  Testament  and  will 
be  after  the  ISTew.  For  the  Bible  presents  to  us  pic- 
tures not  of  human  wrath  only  but  of  the  noble  anger 
of  God.  He  is  not  conceived  as  passive  and  emo- 
tionless, "to  whom  no  sound  of  human  sorrow  mounts 
to  mar  His  sacred  everlasting  calm."  He  is  a  God  of 
divine  love  of  right  and  divine  scorn  of  wrong.  The 
same  evangelist  who  speaks  of  God's  wonderful  and 
sacrificial  love,  speaks  also  of  "the  winepress  of  the 
fierceness  of  the  wrath  of  Almighty  God."  And  so 
also  in  God  in  Christ  we  see  no  tame  and  neutral 
heart.  He  was -the  lowly  and  meek  and  gentle  one. 
But  we  read  also  that  "He  looked  round  with  anger" 
on  malice  and  hypocrisy,  as  any  noble,  not  to  say 
divine  soul,  must.  He  Himself  declared  that  He 
had  come  not  to  send  peace  but  a  sword.  Among 


70  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

His  last  great  words  were  words  of  hate  of  evil  and 
insincerity  (Rev.  ii,  6).  And  the  great  day  of 
Avrath  upon  the  world  is  to  be  the  day  of  the  wrath 
of  the  Lamb  (Rev.  vi,  16,  17). 

I  think  we  must  allow  that  Christianity  has  in 
it  a-  place  for  hatred.  And  Christianity  not  only  per- 
mits, it  fosters  wrath.  Love  involves  hatred.  To 
support  the  principle  of  good  necessitates  antagonism 
to  the  principle  of  evil.  Christianity  is  the  greatest 
love  producing  power  in  the  world,  because  it  is  also 
the  greatest  fountain  of  godly  wrath.  It  was  the 
rich  development  of  both  qualities  in  Christ  that 
gave  Him  uniqueness.  "Thou  hast  loved  righteous- 
ness and  hated  iniquity,"  quotes  the  writer  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  from  the  45th  Psalm. 
"  Therefore  God,  thy  God,  hath  anointed  Thee  with 
the  oil  of  gladness  above  Thy  fellows."  Religion 
does  not  suppress  our  right  feelings  of  love  and 
hatred.  It  intensifies  them.  The  Christian  spirit 
never  asks  the  Lotus  Eater's  question, 

"  What  pleasure  can  we  have  to  war  with  evil  ?" 

The  very  end  of  life  is  character  and  service,  which 
require  war  with  evil.  The  difference  between 
Luther  and  Erasmus  was  precisely  this.  Luther 
blazed  and  struck.  Erasmus  shut  down  his  passion 
and  forebore.  "I  have  always  been  cautious,"  said 
he;  "I  would  rather  die  than  cause  a  disturbance. 
.  .  .  When  we  can  do  no  good  we  have  a  right 
to  be  silent.  A  worm  like  me  must  not  dis- 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Hatred  71 

pute  with  our  lawful  rulers.  .  .  .  We  must  bear 
almost  anything  rather  than  throw  the  world  into 
confusion.  There  are  seasons  when  we  must  even 
conceal  the  truth."  But  this  was  not  the  Christian 
manhood  speaking.  There  are  times  when  that  man- 
hood rebels  righteously  against  easy-going  tolerance 
and  soft  indulgence  and  promiscuous  assent,  and 
despises  moderatism  and  moral  inaction.  "I  do  not 
shrink,"  said  Cardinal  Newman  in  his  Apologia, 
of  the  conditions  of  his  day  in  England,  "I  do  not 
shrink  from  uttering  my  firm  conviction  that  it  would 
be  a  gain  to  the  country  were  it  vastly  more  super- 
stitious, more  bigoted,  more  gloomy,  more  fierce  in 
its  religion  than  at  present  it  shows  itself  to  be." 
This  is  not  irreligious.  It  is  true  religion. 

And  Christianity  not  only  allows  and  fosters 
hatred.  It  provides  it  with  definite  objects.  It  pro- 
vides them  first  of  all  in  a  man's  own  life  and  will; 
and  especially  that  sin  which  exalts  a  man's  kinship 
to  the  beasts,  which  drags  into  the  open  the  sacred 
things  and  fills  the  open  places  with  secrets,  which  de- 
files life  in  its  holy  possibilities;  that  sin  (I  do  not 
need  to  describe  it  more)  which  makes  it  impossible 
for  a  man  to  give  what  he  gets  on  his  wedding-day. 
This  is  a  hateful  thing.  It  is  not  a  thing  to  be  con- 
doned as  natural  and  necessary.  "All  men  fall,"  said 
a  man  to  me  not  long  ago.  That  was  a  coward's  lie. 
This  sin  of  impurity  should  be  despised  and  detested. 
Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  Christianity  provides  for 
the  comfortable,  philosophical  tolerance  of  such  an 


72  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

affront  to  God  and  to  all  women  and  to  Christian 
manhood  ?  ~No,  God  means  it  to  be  loathed.  And 
Christianity  bids  us  hate  also  the  sin  of  ingratitude. 
The  meanest  of  men  is  the  ingrate.  I  knew  once  of 
a  man  whose  mother  was  toiling  and  sacrificing  to 
put  him  through  college.  He  was  aping  the  ways  of 
the  dilettanti,  the  men  of  wealth  and  ease.  And  he 
evaded  the  subject  of  mothers.  One  of  our  best 
papers  published  some  time  ago  an  editorial  on  "The 
Meanest  Man  I  ever  Knew."  He  was  the  man  like 
my  man.  Are  such  qualities  to  be  smiled  upon,  or 
good  humoredly  endured  as  necessary  human  foibles  ? 
Kot  if  we  have  got  the  Christian  character  in  us. 
We  will  look  upon  such  things  with  contempt  and 
will  express  it.  And  Christianity  has  always  des- 
pised that  most  un-Christlike  spirit  of  selfishness 
which  leads  a  man  to  shirk  his  share.  These  things 
we  are  positively  to  hate,  and  to  hate  them  first  of 
all  in  ourselves,  where  we  will  find  them  either  in 
the  development  or  in  the  capacity.  After  we  have 
hated  them  there  we  can  hate  them  elsewhere, — only 
then. 

"  Thou  to  wax  fierce !    In  the  cause  of  the  Lord ! 
Anger  and  zeal — and  the  joy  of  the  brave, 
Who  bade  thee  to  feel, — sin's  slave?" 

All  the  things  hated  by  God,  the  great  hater,  we,  too, 
are  to  hate, — all  evil  devising,  all  false  oaths  (Zech. 
viii,  IT),  all  lying  (Prov.  xiii,  5;  Psa.  cxix,  104), 
all  vain  thoughts  (Psa.  cxix,  113),  but  most  of  all, 
all  uncleanness,  which  is  simply  falsehood  in  the 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Hatred  73 

mind  and  flesh.  Jude  bids  us  to  hate  even  the  gar- 
ments spotted  so. 

Ignorance  is  not  enough  here,  for  ignorance  is 
impossible.  We  have  the  knowledge  forced  on  us 
daily.  We  have  to  hate.  "I  have  seen  him,"  writes 
one  of  his  friends  of  Eobertson  of  Brighton,  "grind 
his  teeth  and  clench  his  fists  when  passing  a  man 
who  he  knew  was  bent  on  destroying  an  innocent 
girl ;"  and  he  himself  writes  when  he  was  accidentally 
reminded  of  an  experience  of  his  own,  "My  blood 
was  at  the  moment  running  fire,  and  I  remembered 
that  I  had  once  in  my  life  stood  before  my  fellow 
creature  with  words  that  scathed  and  blasted,  once 
in  my  life  I  felt  a  terrible  might;  I  knew  and  re- 
joiced to  know  that  I  was  inflicting  the  sentence  of 
a  coward's  and  a  liar's  hell."  Perhaps  some  of  us 
have  seen  similar  justifications  of  the  highest  Chris- 
tian wrath.  I  had  a  friend  in  an  Eastern  university 
who  was  a  man  of  singular  sweetness  of  character 
and  of  a  childlike  innocence.  Another  man  in  the 
same  fraternity  with  him  deliberately  set  to  work  to 
ruin  him  and  destroy  what  could  never  be  replaced 
in  him  and  in  several  other  members  of  his  frater- 
nity. That  is  the  kind  of  man  and  that  is  the  kind 
of  brotherhood  for  which  anything  short  of  wrath  is 
too  tame.  The  Christian  character  views  such  things 
with  angry  and  unconcealed  scorn. 

Blessed  is  it  for  us  that  the  religion  which  kindles 
these  hatreds  is  also  able  to  restrain  them.  It  not 
only  kindles  and  nourishes  our  wrath,  it  also  sets 


74  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

limits  to  it — by  forbidding  any  anger  because  of  per- 
sonal dislike  or  of  any  selfish  feeling  or  offense,  by 
fixing  our  wrath  on  principles  not  persons,  and  by 
checking  us  short  of  sin.  "Be  ye  angry,"  says  Paul, 
"and  sin  not" 

I  have  read  of  Joshua  Leavitt,  one  of  the  found- 
ers of  the  New  York  Independent,  that  once  as  he 
sat  in  his  office  he  was  visited  by  a  man  whom  he 
had  known  for  many  years  but  had  not  seen  for  a 
long  time,  a  man  who  had  connected  himself  with 
a  free-love  community  in  the  State  of  New  York  and 
had  espoused  vices  which  filled  Leavitt  with  disgust. 
As  he  turned  about  in  his  chair  and  saw  who  his 
visitor  was,  Leavitt  blazed  forth  on  him.  "Sir," 
shouted  he,  "I  abhor  you,  I  abhor  you,  I  abhor  you !" 
I  do  not  think  that  there  was  an  un-Christian  hatred 
of  a  human  soul  here.  There  was  a  great  Christian 
scorn  for  the  diabolical  principles  which  had  pos- 
sessed the  soul.  It  will  doubtless  sometimes  be  hard 
to  make  any  distinction,  especially  when  the  bad 
principles  seem  to  have  entirely  permeated  the  soul, 
but  the  Christian  heart  will  find  a  way  to  love  what 
is  to  be  loved,  while  at  the  same  time  it  hates  what 
is  to  be  hated. 

The  Christian  character  needs  this  wrath  against 
sin  for  its  protection.  We  can  not  positively  love 
good,  and  negatively  play  with  evil  or  gloss  evil  over 
or  live  as  though  it  were  not.  I  have  made  my  plea 
for  an  ignorance  of  evil  as  full  as  possible,  but  be- 
yond those  limits  the  right  attitude,  the  only  safe  at- 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Hatred  75 

titude  for  men,  is  positive  indignation.  When  bid- 
den to  govern  our  lives  by  our  admirations  rather 
than  our  disgusts,  we  must  reply  that  the  strength 
of  our  admirations  determines  the  power  of  our  dis- 
gusts, and  that  we  are  just  as  strong  to  love  good  as 
we  are  strong  to  hate  evil.  We  are  made  for  war, 
and  evil  is  our  foe.  We  end  in  inanity  or  tea-party 
poesy  if  we  are  not  as  vigorous  in  our  opposition  to 
wrong  as  we  are  enthusiastic  in  our  devotion  to 
right.  It  was  sadd  of  Robertson,  that  he  com- 
bined "hatred  and  resistance  of  evil  and  a  rever- 
ence and  effort  for  purity."  There  is  no  safety  or 
protection  elsewhere  for  us.  The  man  is  in  peril 
who  has  no  vitriol  save  rose-water  to  sprinkle  on  sin. 
Evil  will  eutwit  him  if  he  thinks  that  he  can  stroke 
it  on  the  back  and  make  it  purr,  and  too  late  he  will 
wish  that  he  had  played  the  man  with  man's  worst  foe. 
The  very  love  of  the  highest  demands  the  scorn 
of  the  lowest.  We  love  truth  as  we  hate  lies.  We 
rise  by  tramping  something  down, 

"  By  the  things  that  are  under  our  feet, 

By  what  we  have  mastered  of  good  and  gain, 
By  the  pride  deposed  and  the  passion  slain, 
By  the  vanquished  ills  that  we  hourly  meet.  " 

And  this  is  the  only  way  that  we  ever  do  rise.  If  we 
are  too  gentle  to  stamp  on  anything  we  shall  have 
to  'forego  the  glory  of  any  ascent.  This  is  the  law  of 
the  soul's  growth  and  of  all  moral  victory.  "Good" 
is  our  weapon,  but  we  are  to  use  it  as  warriors  and 
to  overcome  evil  with  it.  We  are  indeed  to  draw 


76  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

nigh  to  God,  but  we  are  to  do  it  by  resisting  the 
devil.  Always  the  Scriptural  appeal  is  the  appeal 
of  sound  sense  and  of  Christian  manhood.  "Hate 
the  evil  and  love  the  good,"  "Abhor  that  which  is 
evil,  cleave  to  that  which  is  good."  Christian  char- 
acter must  be  as  hot  in  the  one  as  in  the  other. 

And  a  righteous  and  fierce  wrath  against  evil  is 
not  only  the  protection  of  the  Christian  character, 
it  is  also  a  source  of  power  to  it.  Mr.  R.  H.  Hutton, 
in  one  of  his  essays,  remarks  concerning  Martin 
Luther,  that  "he  never  did  anything  well  until  his 
wrath  was  excited  and  then  he  could  do  anything 
well."  Christianity  is  not  a  girlish  thing.  Maurice 
complained  that  this  was  the  character  da  Vinci  put 
into  the  face  of  John  in  his  fresco  of  the  -Last  Sup- 
per. But  John  was  no  weak  and  insipid  character. 
In  early  years  he  earned,  with  his  brother,  the  name 
of  Boanerges,  and  both  Epistles  and  Apocalypse 
show  the  rich  strength  of  his  soul's  deep  wrath. 

In  lukewarmness,  in  listlessness,  in  any  want  of 
heat  there  is  no  power.  Strength  belongs  to  the  hot- 
hearted  men,  the  men  who  make  onslaughts,  the  men 
who  are  not  afraid  to  speak  out  as  the  Psalmist 
spoke: 

"  Hot  indignation  hath  taken  hold  upon  me, 
Because  of  the  wicked  that  forsake  Thy  law. 
I  hate  every  false  way. 
I  hate  them  that  are  of  a  double  mind  ; 
I  hate  and  abhor  falsehood. 
Do  not  I  hate  them,  O  Lord,  that  hate  thee? 
And  do  I  not  loathe  those  that  rise  up  against  Thee? 
I  hate  them  with  perfect  hatred.  " 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Hatred  77 

And  he  who  spoke  this  was  not  afraid  to  go  on  and 
say  with  fearless  probity  of  soul : 

"  Search  me,  0  God,  and  know  my  heart: 
Try  me  and  know  my  thoughts : 
And  see  if  there  be  any  wicked  way  in  me, 
And  lead  me  in  the  way  everlasting." 

These  are  the  words  of  the  strong  man  contemptuous 
of  evil  and  ready  to  pay  the  price  of  his  contempt. 

This  is  a  long  way  from  boasting,  or  from  that 
cheap  warfare  against  evil  which  is  vocal  alone. 
Keal  hatred  runs  deep  and  the  quiet  man  feels  it 
most.  A  friend  told  me  recently  of  a  meeting  with 
Chinese  Gordon.  It  was  at  a  hotel  in  Brussels. 
Gordon  was  there  discussing  with  the  King  of  Bel- 
gium the  matter  of  his  going  out  to  take  charge  of 
the  Congo  Free  State.  The  history  of  that  State 
would  have  been  very  different  if  he  had  gone.  In 
the  midst  of  the  negotiations  came  the  call  to  the 
Soudan,  and  he  went  off  to  his  death.  My  friend 
told  me  that  he  was  a  very  quiet  little  man,  of  de- 
liberate speech.  The  whole  world  knows  that  he  was 
accustomed  to  "make  good."  And  Gordon  was  a  man 
of  wrath.  He  spoke  out  his  scorn  without  fear  and 
resigned  one  position,  as  secretary  to  Lord  Ripon, 
Viceroy  of  India,  because  he  felt  the  incongruous 
impossibility  of  tying  himself  down  into  the  conven- 
tions of  a  place  that  allowed  no  room  for  wrath 
against  wrong.  He  was  not  accustomed  to  go  armed 
even  in  war,  but  after  the  capture  of  Soochow  in 


78  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

the  Tai-pdng  rebellion,  he  got  a  revolver  and  hunted 
for  Li  Hung  Chang,  who  had  lied  to  him  and  killed 
men  whom  Gordon  had  promised  to  spare.  Happily 
for  the  Chinaman,  Gordon  did  not  find  him.  I 
imagine  he  was  glad  afterwards  that  he  did  not,  but 
I  suspect  that  he  was  always  glad  that  he  went  and 
hunted  for  him,  that  his  heart  was  hot  at  deception 
and  massacre. 

And  now  if  I  seem  to  any  of  you  to  have  put  the 
matter  with  too  much  heat,  may  I  ask  you  to  think 
of  the  reasons  we  have  for  hating  evil  and  sin.  Think 
of  the  homes  it  has  destroyed,  of  the  souls  it  has 
damned.  Think  of  the  fair,  pure  lives  it  has  ruined. 
Think  of  all  the  suffering  of  little  children  it  has 
caused,  of  the  pain  and  tears  and  anguish.  Its  flags 
of  truce  have  been  only  a  cover  for  its  treachery.  It 
has  poisoned  the  wells  of  life.  It  has  spoken  pleas- 
antly only  to  get  near  enough  to  stab  fatally  in  an 
unsuspecting  hour.  Look  out  over  your  own  ac- 
quaintance and  in  upon  your  own  life,  and  when  you 
have  recalled  the  deadly  and  horrible  consequence  of 
the  evil  you  yourselves  have  seen,  tell  me  whether 
your  hearts  are  still  cool  and  temperate.  God's  is 
not.  It  is  hot  with  indignation,  and  it  can  not  stay. 
Christ's  was  not.  Ablaze  with  a  holy  love,  ablaze 
with  a  holy  wrath,  the  terrible  wrath  of  the  angered 
Lamb,  the  Son  of  God,  for  the  sake  of  men  and  at 
the  cost  of  His  life,  flung  Himself  upon  sin  to  tear 
from  it  its  sting.  Are  you  and  I  to  feel  toward  evil 
otherwise  than  these  have  felt? 


Purity:  A  Plea  for  Hatred  79 

There  is  a  simple  little  prayer  which  the  boys 
in  two  of  our  best  preparatory  schools  are  taught  to 
say,  which  may  well  express  the  hard  but  necessary 
lesson  which  I  have  been  urging  here:  "0  God, 
whom  none  can  love  except  they  hate  the  thing  that 
is  evil,  and  who  wiliest  by  Thy  Son,  our  Savior,  to 
redeem  us  from  all  iniquity,  deliver  us  when  we  are 
tempted  to  look  on  sin  without  abhorrence  and  let  the 
virtue  of  His  passion  come  between  us  and  the 
enemy  of  our  souls,  through  the  same  Jesus  Christ 
our  Lord.  Amen." 

The  Christian  character  speaks  in  this  prayer. 


SERVICE 

THE  LIVING  USE  OF  LIFE 


If  you  care  to  give  your  class  a  word  directly  from  me, 
say  to  them  that  they  will  find  it  well,  throughout  life, 
never  to  trouble  themselves  about  what  they  ought  not  to 
do,  but  about  what  they  ought  to  do.  The  condemnation 
given  from  the  judgment  throne — most  solemnly  described 
— is  all  for  the  undones  and  not  for  the  dones.  People  are 
perpetually  afraid  of  doing  wrong ;  but  unless  they  are  doing 
its  reverse  energetically,  they  do  it  all  day  long,  and  the 
degree  does  not  matter.  The  Commandments  are  neces- 
sarily negative,  because  a  new  set  of  positive  ones  would  be 
needed  for  every  person :  while  the  negatives  are  constant. 
— RUSKIN,  "  Arrows  of  the  Chace." 


Major-General  Charles  George  Gordon,  C.  B. 

who  at  all  times 
and  everywhere  gave  his  strength 

to  the  weak, 

His  substance  to  the  poor, 
His  sympathy  to  the  suffering, 

His  heart  to  God. 
— Inscription  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral. 


Ill 

SERVICE 

AN  endless  debate  can  be  opened  over  the  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  we  do  what  we  do  because  we  are 
what  we  are,  or  are  what  we  are  because  we  do  what 
we  do.  On  the  one  hand  we  are  told  in  the  trite  quo- 
tation from  Emerson,  that  what  we  are  speaks  so  loud 
that  what  we  say  can  not  be  heard.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  are  assured  that  what  we  are  is  a  mere  by- 
product of  what  we  do  and  say.  Character  and  serv- 
ice are  set  off  one  against  the  other.  It  is  the  fault 
of  self-centered  culture  that  it  should  be  so.  The 
men  who  call  character  a  mere  by-product  are  sim- 
ply trying  to  correct  the  injurious  effects  of  a  strong 
tendency  among  educated  men,  to  forget  the  duty  of 
public  and  private  ministry  to  others  and  of  partici- 
pation in  the  humble  life  and  work  of  the  world. 
When  men  make  their  own  soul's  life  the  supreme 
thing,  it  is  necessary  to  force  upon  them  with  what- 
ever emphasis,  the  truth  that  the  soul's  life  is  found 
in  its  death,  and  that  a  man  is  here  not  to  be  minis- 
tered unto  but  to  minister,  and  that  he  had  better 
lose  his  soul  saving  his  brethren,  which  happily  in  a 
moral  universe  he  can  not  do,  than  keep  it  at  his 
brother's  loss. 

83 


84  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

In  Christian  manhood  there  is  no  conflict  be- 
tween character  and  service,  for  service  is  one  of  the 
essentials  of  character.  Service  is  the  man  of  truth 
and  purity  spending  himself  upon  the  just  uses  of 
life,  namely  the  uplifting  of  life  and  the  making  of 
men.  We  have  the  best  ground  for  regarding  this  as 
the  supreme  service,  the  real  purpose  of  life. 

When  our  Lord  called  His  first  disciples,  He  did 
not  promise  to  make  them  great  or  rich  or  famous, 
nor  did  He  at  the  first  say  anything  about  making 
them  better  or  happier  men.  He  simply  offered  to 
make  them  useful.  "If  you  will  come  after  Me," 
He  said,  "I  will  give  you  influence.  You  shall  catch 
men." 

There  was  a  noble  tribute  in  Jesus'  method  to 
the  unselfish  capacities  of  human  nature.  He  evi- 
dently expected  that  the  men  to  whom  He  made  this 
proposition  would  respond  to  it,  and  He  got  what 
He  expected.  There  is  a  great  principle  of  charac- 
ter and  service  here.  Many  men  disappoint  us  be- 
cause we  expect  them  to.  In  all  work  for  men  the 
more  we  count  upon  from  them,  the  more  unselfish- 
ness they  feel  we  trust  them  to  show,  the  better  re- 
sults we  shall  secure  from  them.  In  foreign  mis- 
sion work  many  a  native  Church  is  weak  and  depend- 
ent and  unheroic  simply  because  nothing  else  has 
been  expected  of  it.  Many  a  reformed  drunkard  at 
home  has  undone  his  reformation  because  he  was  ex- 
pected to  undo  it.  And  one  reason  why  some  men 
who  have  committed  crime  once  have  gone  on  and 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  85 

become  habitual  criminals,  is  that  society  has  ex- 
pected that  the  act  would  become  a  habit  and  has  be- 
haved toward  them  accordingly.  Again  and  again 
men  did  even  the  impossible  under  Jesus'  encour- 
agement that  they  could.  And  this  miracle  was  not 
confined  to  Jesus'  day.  An  excellent  recent  hand- 
book on  Japan  closes  appropriately  with  two  lines 
from  Conington's  translation  of  Vergil : 

"  These  bring  success  their  zeal  to  fan ; 
They  can  because  they  think  they  can." 

Our  Lord  believed  that  the  prospect  He  held  out 
would  draw  men,  the  kind  of  men  He  needed  and 
the  world  needed.  He  was  confident  that  no  other 
inducements  were  required.  The  issue  justified  His 
faith.  With  no  offer  of  money,  or  honor,  or  ease, 
with  the  frank  assurance  that  instead  there  would 
be  poverty  and  shame  and  peril  and  death,  He  still 
got  His  men  and  gave  the  wrorld  its  salvation,  by 
the  inducement  of  the  opportunity  for  unselfish  per- 
sonal influence. 

This  was  Christ's  ideal  and  method  for  Himself. 
There  were  no  limitations  in  God,  prescribing  the 
form  which  the  Incarnation  should  take.  Jesus 
might  have  been  born  in  any  social  level  or  in  the 
way  of  any  natural  advantages.  He  might  have 
come  as  the  son  of  Csesar,  as  a  man  of  wealth,  or  as 
a  master  of  organization.  He  rejected  all  these 
forms  of  influence  and  deliberately  subjected  him- 
self to  conditions  which  deprived  Him  of  any  method 


86  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

of  action  except  simple  personal  influence.  This  is 
the  last  thing  we  should  have  descended  to  in  His 
place.  One  of  the  first  things  we  would  do  in  set- 
ting out  to  undo  all  wrong  and  establish  all  right- 
eousness would  be  to  enlist  legislation  and  the  forces 
of  government  which  make  legislation  operative.  We 
must  change  the  order  of  society,  we  maintain. 
Jesus  would  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  poli- 
tics. He  discouraged  every  effort  to  politicalize  His 
mission,  and  He  entirely  divorced  His  method  from 
every  suspicion  or  possibility  of  political  entangle- 
ment. Next  to  the  conviction  that  without  legisla- 
tion nothing  of  a  radical  or  adequate  character  can 
be  done,  is  our  modern  axiom  that  money  is  indis- 
pensable. We  speculate  on  the  power  of  wealth  to 
produce  moral  and  spiritual  reforms.  We  make 
plans  for  the  extension  of  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
which  need  only  wealth  behind  them  to  revolutionize 
the  world.  With  wealth,  we  say,  unconsciously  alter- 
ing a  great  saying  of  Christ's,  nothing  is  impossible. 
Indeed  the  logic  of  our  attitude  often  would  drive  us 
to  complete  the  parody:  "With  God  it  is  impossible, 
but  not  with  money;  for  with  money  all  things  are 
possible."  Jesus  never  spoke  thus.  Such  ideas 
never  entered  His  thought.  Money  in  any  capacity, 
least  of  all  as  a  method  of  influence,  was  of  no  inter- 
est to  Him.  His  references  to  it  are  usually  con- 
temptuous. The  idea  of  using  gold  to  alter  char- 
acter and  to  make  dead  men  live,  would  have  seemed 
pitiful  to  Him.  As  for  organization,  which  is  the 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  87 

third  great  reliance  of  our  day,  that,  too,  He  treated 
with  a  silent  indifference.  Our  great  generals  and 
engineers  and  merchants  and  statesmen  to-day  are 
the  organizers,  the  men  who  arrange  men  and  class- 
ify them  and  fix  their  grades  and  orders  and  swing 
them  as  a  mechanism.  Jesus,  however,  was  not  a 
mechanic  in  this  sense.  He  had  earned  his  bread  by 
a  trade,  but  religion  was  not  a  trade  to  Him.  He 
was  not  a  drill-master  nor  a  manipulator  of  men. 
When  His  disciples  urged  Him.  to  set  up  some  sort 
of  organization  and  assign  them  their  place  in  it,  He 
refused,  and  He  died  at  last  without  having  done 
anything  whatever  to  assure  the  permanence  of  His 
movement  by  organization. 

Now  legislation  and  wealth  and  organization  are 
all  legitimate  and  noble  agencies  for  the  accomplish- 
ment of  right  ends.  •  Men  act  with  propriety  when 
they  seek  to  subordinate  these  forces  to  the  ends  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God.  All  I  urge  here,  however,  is 
that  Jesus  did  not  do  so.  He  was  neither  a  political 
nor  a  financial  figure.  He  just  went  about  in  a  sim- 
ple fashion,  talking  to  people,  telling  them  His  ideas, 
giving  help  here  and  there  in  a  tender,  sympathetic 
way,  doing  good  generously  but  by  no  means  indis- 
criminately, laying  out  His  life  upon  any  responsive 
life  He  could  find,  "catching  men,"  to  use  His  own 
expression,  and  catching  them  not  in  multitudes  or 
by  great  orations,  but  in  quiet  individual  ways ;  and 
then  He  died  and  that  was  the  end  of  it.  Was  that 
the  end  of  it  ?  Indeed  that  was  only  the  beginning 


88  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

of  it.  We  see  now  that  what  was  going  on  so  quietly 
and  unostentatiously  there  in  a  secluded  corner  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  was  the  greatest  upheaving 
movement  of  all  history. 

And  this  ideal  of  personal  service,  of  influence 
by  life,  of  the  silent  ministry  to  men  by  contact  and 
love  and  helpfulness,  which  was  the  method  of  Jesus. 
He  commended  to  others.  He  sought  to  teach  it  to 
His  disciples.  His  aim  was  to  impart  to  them  His 
secret,  not  in  any  external  or  mechanical  way,  but  by 
putting  His  own  life  and  spirit  into  them.  He  longed 
to  see  a  society  established  whose  members  should 
be  one  in  as  vital  a  sense  as  the  branches  of  the  vine 
are  one,  with  all  the  members  serving  one  another 
and  serving  the  world.  And  this  ideal  of  service  by 
life  and  of  life  to  the  end  of  life,  is  what  I  mean  by 
service  as  an  essential  of  Christian  character,  the 
use  of  life  as  a  free  personal  force  for  the  molding 
of  other  lives. 

It  is  objected  to  this  as  a  principle  and 
method  of  life  that  it  is  so  nebulous  and  intangi- 
ble. Building  bridges,  preparing  briefs,  performing 
operations,  are  all  rational  and  effective  activities, 
but  simply  befriending  a  man,  or  teaching  him  the 
truth  or  winning  him  to  God  and  to  duty, — this  is  so 
indefinite  and  invisible  that  many  men  decline  to 
evaporate  their  lives  in  such  ways.  Even  when  this 
objection  is  not  consciously  put  it  is  often  uncon- 
sciously felt,  and  men  turn  nowadays  away  from  the 
sort  of  service  Christ  worked  with,  to  something  less 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  89 

nebulous  and  obscure.  It  is  worth  while  considering 
carefully  this  attitude  of  mind  as  we  meet  it, — the 
disinclination  to  the  immaterial  and  the  inconspicu- 
ous, the  depreciation  of  the  service  and  services  most 
exalted  by  Christ. 

We  meet  the  idea  in  the  objection  sometimes 
made  to  a  great  man,  that  he  was  of  obscure  origin, 
as  though  that  were  a  sort  of  disproof  of  his  great- 
ness, or  if  not  that,  yet  an  unimportant  background 
against  which  his  successful  life  stands  out  as  the 
truly  significant  life  of  the  man ;  whereas,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  probably  what  the  world  calls  the  man's 
greatness  is  something  that  simply  followed  as  a  per- 
functory corollary  on  the  man's  real  greatness, 
which  the  world  never  knew  anything  about,  but 
which  characterized  the  obscure  and  the  inconspicu- 
ous years. 

We  sometimes  hear  the  same  sort  of  criticism 
made  against  great  movements.  I  have  heard  Chris- 
tianity objected  to  on  the  ground  that  it  rests-  on  such 
obscure  beginnings,  and  we  are  told  that  we  should 
be  wiser  than  to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  world-em- 
bracing faith  like  Christianity  on  such  precarious 
origins,  origins  so  little  noted  by  the  world  at  the 
time,  and  regarding  which  we  have  such  very  slender 
historical  testimony  even  now.  This  objection 
against  one  great  movement,  however,  is  an  objection 
against  all  history;  against  all  unrecorded  history, 
which  is  made  up  of  a  great  mass  of  unnoticed 
things ;  and  against  most  recorded  history,  the  larger 


90  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

part  of  which  has  to  do  with  what  was  obscure  and 
inconspicuous,  and  only  at  last  flared  out  into  some- 
thing spectacular  and  great. 

And  this  objection  against  history  is  an  objection 
against  life,  for  life  itself  is  the  most  inconspicuous 
and  obscure  and  unnoticed  thing  in  the  world.  It  is 
the  one  thing  that  nobody  ever  yet  got  hold  of.  No 
microscope  ever  caught  it ;  no  surgeon  ever  had  knife 
sharp  enough  to  cut  to  it ;  no  biologist  ever  found  it, 
nor  has  any  chemist  ever  separated  it;  and  no  eye 
ever  looked  upon  it;  and  it  works  in  perfect  quiet- 
ness, so  that  nobody  every  heard  it.  And  yet  we  all 
know  that  the  most  powerful  thing  in  this  world,  the 
only  thing  after  all  that  amounts  to  anything,  is  this 
same  obscure,  inconspicuous,  undiscoverable  life.  It 
seems  to  me  that  thoughts  like  these  ought  to  sug- 
gest to  us  the  great  principle,  that  perhaps  after  all 
the  things  that  we  call  big  and  important  do  not 
amount  to  so  much,  and  that  possibly  the  greatest 
things  in  the  world  are  the  inconspicuous  and  the 
obscure  and  the  unnoticed  things,  alike  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world,  in  the  forces  that  mold  it,  and  in 
the  making  up  of  the  characters  of  individual  men. 

Assuredly,  as  we  look  back  over  the  past,  the 
great  forces  that  have  molded  it  have  been  the  incon- 
spicuous and  unnoticed  forces.  There  is  a  fine  pas- 
sage in  one  of  Cardinal  Newman's  Parochial  Ser- 
mons on  The  World's  Great  Benefactors,  in  which 
he  begins  by  speaking  of  our  ignorance  of  most  of 
the  really  great  men : 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  91 

"  Our  lesson  is  this:  that  those  men  are  not  necessarily 
the  most  useful  men  in  the  generation,  not  the  most  favored 
by  God,  who_make  the  most  noise  in  the  world^  and  who  I 
seem  to  be  principafs  in  the  great  changes  and  events  re- 
corded in  history ;  on  the  contrary,  that  even  when  we  are 
able  to  point  to  a  certain  number  of  men  as  the  real  instru- 
ments of  any  great  blessings  vouchsafed  to  mankind,  our  rel- 
ative estimate  of  them,  one  with  another,  is  very  often  er- 
roneous ;  so  that,  on  the  whole,  if  we  could  trace  truly  the 
hand  of  God  in  human  affairs,  and  pursue  His  bounty  as 
displayed  in  the  world,  to  its  original  sources,  we  must  un- 
learn our  admiration  of  the  powerful  and  distinguished,  our 
reliance  on  the  opinion  of  society,  our  respect  for  the  de- 
cisions of  the  learned  or  the  multitude,  and  turn  our  eyes 
to  private  life,  watching  in  all  we  read  or  witness  for  the 
true  signs  of  God's  presence,  the  graces  of  personal  holiness 
manifested  in  His  elect ;  which,  weak  as  they  may  seem  to 
mankind,  are  mighty  through  God,  and  have  an  influence 
upon  the  course  of  His  providence,  and  bring  about  great 
events  in  the  world  at  large,  when  the  wisdom  and  strength 
of  the  natural  man  are  of  no  avail." 

And  then  he  goes  on  to  ask  who  it  was  that  first 
domesticated  the  animals  that  now  serve  man  alike 
for  burden  and  for  food,  who  it  was  that  first  culti- 
vated the  great  articles  of  food  at  their  beginning, 
and  who  were  the  great  inventors  of  most  of  those 
benefits  which  are  helpful  to  the  world,  and  the  dis- 
coverers of  most  of  those  remedies  which  have  re- 
lieved men  in  their  times  of  sickness  and  disease. 

Now  and  then  we  know  the  name  of  some  man 
who  has  been  boastful  enough  to  attach  his  name  to 
his  achievement,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  most  of  the 
great  achievements  of  the  world  are  untagged.  We 
say  of  this  or  that  great  discoverer,  "He  was  the  first 


92  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

man  to  look  on  those  lakes."  Perhaps  so,  or  perhaps 
he  was  the  first  man  who  published  it.  Long  before 
ever  that  man  looked  on  the  lakes  other  men  had 
been  there  who  took  out  their  pay  in  the  joy  of  hav- 
ing done  the  thing.  Or  we  say  about  this  man,  "He 
made  this  great  discovery,"  but  long  before  he  made 
it  some  other  man  had  thought  of  it,  had  worked 
over  it  in  his  way,  and  simply  failed  to  claim  the 
world's  praise  for  what  he  had  done.  You  remem- 
ber how  Kipling  puts  the  spirit  in  The  Pioneer: 

"Well  I  know  who'll  take  the  credit, 
All  the  clever  chaps  that  followed ; 
Came  a  dozen  men  together, 
Never  knew  my  desert  fears ; 
Tracked  me  by  the  camps  I'd  quitted, 
Used  the  water  holes  I'd  hollowed. 
They  '11  go  back  and  do  the  talking ; 
They'll  be  called  the  pioneers." 

But  all  the  while  the  real  pioneer  had  done  his  work 
and  done  it,  like  a  man,  in  the  dark 

And  you  can  think  of  the  service  of  the  world  on 
a  higher  level  than  this.  Who  was  the  first  man  who 
ever  said  "truth"  or  "virtue"  or  "manliness"  or 
"'courage"  or  "self-sacrifice  ?"  There  must  have  been 
a  time  when  no  man  heard  those  words.  Who  was 
the  man  who  coined  them,  and,  more  than  that,  first 
thought  those  thoughts?  There  must  have  been  a 
time  when  first  in  all  human  thinking  a  man  dreamed 
the  great  dream  of  patriotism,  or  heroic  self-sacrifice, 
or  began  to  think  about  truth  and  virtue  and  faith. 
Who  was  that  man  ?  We  look  back  over  the  history 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  93 

of  the  world,  and  \ve  can  see,  even  with  our  short 
sight,  that  the  biggest  things  that  have  been  done  in 
the  world  were  done  in  inconspicuousness  and  ob- 
scurity, by  men  who  were  satisfied  to  do  the  thing; 
may  be  by  great  masses  of  men,  each  one  of  whom 
contributed  just  a  little  bit ;  and  that,  after  all,  the 
mighty  forces  that  have  made  the  world  are  not  the 
boasted,  the  conspicuous  forces,  but  the  forces  that 
have  worked  in  obscurity  and  in  silence. 

What  I  am  coming  to  is  just  the  great  principle 
that  perhaps  that  is  true  still  which  has  been  true 
of  all  the  past  as  we  look  back  over  it.  Perhaps  to- 
day the  great  forces  that  are  molding  the  world  are 
not  the  noisy  and  the  turbulent  forces,  not  the  news- 
papers, not  the  diplomats,  not  the  governors,  far  less 
the  thunders  of  the  cannon,  but  the  silent,  the  incon- 
spicuous, the  unobserved  forces. 

One  of  our  most  popular  statesmen,  speaking  a 
little  while  ago  on  the  deck  of  an  American  battle- 
ship, said  that  there  was  no  class  of  the  American 
population  which  he  admired  so  much,  about  which 
he  felt  so  much  enthusiasm,  as  the  enlisted  men  in 
the  army  and  navy  of  the  United  States.  But 
why  ?  They  are  doing  their  work  so  far  as  they  are 
fulfilling  their  duty,  but  after  all,  the  soldier  does 
his  best  work  for  the  world,  not  because  he  is  a  sol- 
dier, but  because  he  is  still  a  man,  and  the  noblest 
work  he  does  is  the  work  he  does,  not  as  a  soldier, 
but  as  a  common  man.  And  the  great  movements  in 
the  world,  the  forces  that  are  really  shaping  the  na- 


94  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

tions  and  determining  the  whole  "future  of  the  world, 
are  not  the  forces  that  are  making  the  tumult  or  the 
disturbance,  but  the  forces  that  are  doing  their  work 
in  silence  of  power.  Last  winter  Mr.  John  G.  Mil- 
burn,  one  of  the  leading  lawyers  of  3sTew  York  City, 
was  speaking  at  a  meeting  of  the  Williams  Alumni 
Association  regarding  the  comparative  ineffective- 
ness of  the  sort  of  work  that  public  men  were  doing 
in  the  world.  He  spoke  especially  of  the  futility  of 
legislation,  of  the 'fact  that  most  of  the  statute  books 
are  graveyards  of  acts  that  might  as  well  never  have 
been  passed  at  all,  and  said  that  these  things 
amounted  to  almost  absolutely  nothing  in  really 
shaping  the  world.  The  great  work  of  the  world 
was  done  by  mothers  in  the  homes,  teaching  little 
children;  by  school  teachers  in  obscure  country  dis- 
tricts, shaping  the  ideals  of  honor  and  truth  of  little 
boys  and  girls ;  the  great  work  of  the  world  was  that 
done  by  the  moral  forces  content  to  work  in  silence 
and  obscurity. 

Very  little  thought  about  history  ought  to  show 
us  the  fallacy  of  our  ordinary  thinking  in  this  mat- 
ter. We  look  back,  for  example,  to  those  days  just 
before  the  Reformation,  when  the  whole  world  had 
its  eyes  taken  up  with  the  gilt  pageantry  of  history, 
and  when  men  were  watching  the  coronation  of  great 
emperors  or  the  enthroning  of  great  popes.  What  was 
the  great,  the  real  event  that  was  happening  ?  Away 
back  in  an  obscure  German  village,  a  miner's  wife 
was  bringing  forth  her  firstborn  son.  The  birth  of 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  95 

that  little  German  boy,  and  the  influence  of  that 
mother's  hand  on  his  life  and  character,  as  in  the 
humble  miner's  home  at  Eisleben  she  taught  him. 
to  despise  lies  with  all  his  will,  and  to  love  purity 
and  honor  and  justice, — that  was  the  great  work 
that  marked  that  mighty  century.  Out  from  that 
obscurity  Martin  Luther  came  to  change  the  whole 
course  of  history  and  to  shake  the  world.  And  it  is 
just  so  in  the  world  to-day.  Some  unknown  mother, 
some  obscure  school  teacher,  some  student  working 
alone  with  a  fellow-student,  is  doing  the  great  work 
of  this  generation  in  shaping  the  life  or  character 
of  the  men  who  are  to  come  out  to  be  the  leaders  of 
the  people. 

One  of  the  most  impressive  speeches  I  ever  heard 
at  Northfield  was  by  the  late  Dean  Wayland,  of  the 
Yale  Law  School.  He  was  speaking  on  Round 
Top  one  night  of  his  envy  of  what  he  saw  and  felt 
at  Northfield.  He  was  speaking  of  his  own  profes- 
sion of  the  law,  a  profession  which  he  graced  and 
honored,  but  a  profession  of  which  he  spoke  with  a 
good  deal  of  regret  that  night,  as  he  measured  what 
he  felt  to  be  its  possibilities  against  the  mighty  pos- 
sibilities of  using  a  whole  life  in  one  of  the  great 
moral  movements  of  the  world  to-day.  I  remember 
how  Major  Robert  Stiles,  of  the  Confederate  Army, 
listened  to  and  afterwards  took  exception  to  what 
he  said.  He  was  a  devout  lawyer,  and  he  did  not 
like  Dean  Wayland's  depreciation  of  their  profession. 
But  Dean  Wayland  stood  to  his  guns,  contending  that 


96  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

after  all  the  men  that  did  the  world's  greatest  work 
were  the  men  who  buried  their  lives  supremely  in 
the  great  moral  and  spiritual  forces  that  are  shaping 
and  transforming  the  world.  These  things,  the  silent 
activities,  the  great  moral  activities,  are  the  forces 
that  dominate  and  control  and  give  shape  to  human 
history. 

If  I  were  not  a  sort  of  guerilla  preacher,  I  would 
go  into  the  regular  ministry,  because  I  believe  that 
the  ministry  of  the  Church  offers  to  men  the  finest 
opportunity  open  to  any  man  to  make  his  whole  life 
tell  in  distinctively  spiritual  service.  And  if  I  could 
not  go  into  the  Christian  ministry,  I  think  I  would 
be  a  teacher,  because  it  seems  to  me  that  those  two 
professions,  with  least  incumbrance,  with  least  im- 
pediment, with  least  secular  hindrance,  release  the 
whole  of  a  man's  moral  force  upon  the  moral  char- 
acters of  men  and  women  around  about  him,  and 
give  him  the  opportunity  to  make  his  whole  self  felt- 
in  the  way  in  which  a  man's  life  can  accomplish 
most  for  the  good  and  upbuilding  of  the  world. 

All  this  ought  to  bring  nearer  home  to  us  the 
great  truth  of  the  significance  of  the  inconspicuous 
and  the  unobserved.  After  all,  if  we  would  only  ex- 
amine our  own  lives  closely,  we  should  see  that  it 
was  not  the  great  or  the  spectacular,  the  significant 
or  the  important  thing  that  had  accomplished  very 
much  in  shaping  and  giving  direction  to  our  lives. 
Something  very  little  probably  determined  our  choice 
of  college  or  university.  Something  very  little 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  97 

brought  every  man  of  us  into  the  Christian  life. 
Once  we  begin  to  examine  our  lives,  we  see  that  prac- 
tically all  the  great  things  of  our  lives  have  flowed 
out  of  things  so  small  that  we  have  absolutely  for- 
gotten their  beginnings. 

Great  men  have  for  the  most  part  been  shaped 
and  directed  by  just  some  such  unnoticed  and  ob- 
scure thing  in  their  lives.  What  was  it  that  took 
James  Chalmers,  for  example,  out  to  the  South  Seas  ? 
Read  his  biography  and  you  will  find  that  James 
Chalmers  settled  the  great  question  of  his  life  as  a 
boy  of  twelve  in  a  little  Scotch  Sunday  School.  Mr. 
Mackie,the  Sunday  School  superintendent,  read  from 
the  United  Presbyterian  Church  Missionary  Record 
a  letter  from  one  of  their  missionaries  in  the  South 
Sea  Islands,  and  when  he  had  finished  the  letter  he 
leaned  down  and  looked  into  the  faces  of  the  chil- 
dren and  said,  "I  wonder  if  there  is  a  boy  here  this 
afternoon  who  will  yet  become  a  missionary."  Like 
an  arrow  those  words  went  to  James  Chalmers's 
heart,  though  he  told  no  one  of  his  determination. 
Years  of  recklessness  followed,  but  he  never  lost  that 
purpose.  And  James.  Chalmers,  the  dearest  char- 
acter that  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  ever  met,  was 
what  he  was  and  became  what  he  became,  and  died 
the  martyr  death  he  died  only  five  or  six  years  ago 
in  the  South  Seas,  because  as  a  lad  of  twelve  that 
single,  obscure,  unnoticed  influence  had  gone  across 
his  life.  What  was  it  that  took  Coleridge  Patteson 
out  to  the  South  Seas  ?  Perhaps  the  hand  of  a  godly 
7 


98  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

old  man  laid  on  the  head  of  the  little  English  boy 
as  he  stood  in  the  hall  of  his  father's  house. 
Bishop  Selwyn  had  been  preaching  in  the  church  of 
the  neighborhood,  and  Coleridge  Patteson,  who  was 
present,  was  so  worked  up  with  enthusiasm  for  that 
noble,  venerable  man,  with  his  heroic  career,  that 
he  wanted  to  get  up  and  cry,  "God  bless  him !"  Be- 
fore Bishop  Selwyn  left  he  said  to  Patteson's  mother, 
"Won't  you  give  me  Coley?"  The  memory  of  his 
words  doubtless  went  out  of  Judge  Patteson's  mind, 
but  the  sound  of  that  old  man's  voice  never  died  in 
Coleridge  Patteson's  ears,  and  years  afterwards  he 
went  out  to'his  life  in  the  South  Seas,  partly,  at  least, 
because  of  the  touch  of  that  old  man's  hand  on  his 
boyish  life  in  his  father's  house.  And  I  suspect  that 
if  at  the  end  we  look  back  over  our  lives,  we  shall 
see  that  thing  which  has  determined  our  career  has 
been  some  inconspicuous  and  obscure  and  unnoticed 
incident,  so  inconspicuous,  maybe,  that  it  had  slipped 
entirely  out  of  our  memory. 

It  is  on  this  ground,  this  high  ground,  that  ap- 
peal can  be  made  to  men  to  see  the  divine  significance 
of  the  trivial  things  in  their  lives.  "When  saw  we 
Thee?"  we  shall  say  to  Christ  at  the  last.  "Me? 
Why,  you  saw  Me  in  college,  when  you  talked  with 
that  other  man  and  he  offered  to  you  the  opportunity 
of  your  life.  You  saw  Me  that  day  when  you  stood 
face  to  face  with  that  petty  temptation  and  yielded. 
You  have  forgotten  all  about  it,  but  you  settled  the 
destiny  of  your  life  in  that  trivial  and  unobserved 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  99 

moment."  You  and  I  are  determining  our  whole 
careers  by  things  that  appear  .now  of  absolutely  no 
consequence.  As  I  look  back  over  my  college  course, 
I  can  see  several  great  turning  points  in  it.  One  in- 
vitation especially  I  recall,  that  a  man  gave  me  in, 
Belmonico's  after  a  dinner  of  what  we  called  the 
Dramatic  Association;  it  is  the  Princeton  Triangle 
Club  now.  I  look  back  now  at  the  declination  of 
that  invitation  as  one  of  the  important  points  in  my 
college  career,  and  I  can  see  that  that  simple  refusal 
was  the  determining  of  a  course  of  action  that  was 
to  grow  into  a  habit  secure.  And  it  will  be  just  so 
with  many  of  us.  A  little  surrender  in  a  perfectly 
trivial  thing  to  the  lower  nature  in  us  is,  after  all, 
the  whole  abdication.  Everything  flows  from  that 
one  petty,  trivial,  unnoticed  defeat.  I  call  you  to 
witness  that  the  very  judgment-day  at  last  is  to  turn 
on  absolutely  forgotten  trivialities.  Christ  is  going 
to  judge  men  at  that  day,  not  by  the  big  things  they 
did,  by  the  things  that  have  got  into  their  biographies, 
but  by  things  so  small  that  the  men  can  not  even 
remember  them  themselves.  "When  sarw  we  Thee  ?" 
will  be  their  question.  "When  did  we  decide  this 
great  issue  ?  We  never  knew  that  we  were  deciding 
it."  And  Christ  will  say:  "Just  so,  it  was  on  that 
principle  that  I  organized  human  life,  that  every  de- 
cision that  men  made  should  be  the  dominant  de- 
cision, a  controlling  decision,  a  decision  making  its 
contribution  to  their  character  forever  and  their 
eternal  destiny." 


ioo  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

The  thought  that  some  of  you  will  think  to-night, 
after  you  have  lain  down  on  your  beds  and  the  lights 
are  out,  will  be  the  thought  that  will  give  shape  and 
determination  to  all  your  character  and  coming  ca- 
reer. It  is  not  the  big  thing,  the  conspicuous  thing, 
the  noticed  thing,  that  is  the  really  vital  and  essential 
thing  in  our  personal  lives;  it  is  the  little,  trivial, 
inconsequential  thing.  You  remember  how  Mr. 
Moody  used  to  put  it  in  his  sharp,  epigrammatic 
way.  "Men !"  he  would  say,  "Character  is  what  a 
man  is  in  the  dark."  Yes,  character  is  what  a  man 
becomes  in  the  dark,  not  what  a  man  becomes  out  on 
the  stage.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  it  is  true,  as 
Tolstoi  says,  that  a  man  is  just  a  machine,  the  dis- 
charge of  a  loaded  gun  the  trigger  of  which  has  been 
already  pulled.  That  simply  happens  which  it  was 
foredoomed  should  happen,  and  it  was  foredoomed 
in  the  petty  and  the  trivial  and  the  inconsequential 
and  the  unnoticed  things.  That  is  the  reason,  it 
seems  to  me,  a  man  should  keep  himself  clean.  Every 
time  we  yield  to  the  sensual  taste,  however  innocent 
it  may  appear,  we  are  making  our  contribution  to 
the  strength  of  the  lower  life  in  us,  and  subtracting 
from  the  power  of  that  final  character  which  is  the 
complete  subjugation  of  everything  sensual  and  low. 
Let  the  judgment  that  Christ  is  to  pass  upon  us  at 
the  last,  warn  us  against  our  failure  to  behold  Him 
in  the  trivial  and  the  inconsequential.  In  that  day 
we  shall  ask  Him,  "When  saw  we  Thee?"  "Saw 
Me?"  He  will  answer:  "When  you  lied  to  that  man 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  101 

in  your  class  in  college,  you  lied  to  Me.  When  you 
struck  that  man  on  the  athletic  field,  and  the  umpire 
was  not  looking,  you  struck  Me.  When  you  cheated 
that  widow  and  her  children  as  you  were  practicing 
your  profession,  you  were  cheating  Me.  In  all  the 
dishonesty  and  the  dishonor  and  the  meanness  of 
your  life  you  were  affronting  Me.  When  saw  you 
Me?  In  absolutely  every  trial  and  testing  of  your 
life  you  faced  Me."  This  life  of  ours,  what  is  it 
except  just  the  story  of  our  attitude  to  Jesus  Christ  ? 
My  bearing  to  every  man  is  my  bearing  toward 
Christ.  Every  hope  and  thought  and  act  and  prac- 
tice of  mine  is  a  judgment  for  or  against  Jesus 
Christ.  In  the  secrecies  of  our  life  we  are  living 
against  Him  or  for  Him,  and  at  the  last  we  shall  be 
judged  in  proportion  as  everything  we  did  was  a 
service  of  or  an  affront  to  the  Christ  whom  we  served 
or  spurned  in  the  silences  of  our  lives. 

But  it  is  not  only  a  forbidding  and  terrible  truth 
that  we  are  confronting  here.  It  is  also  one  of  the 
most  consoling  truths  that  can  come  to  a  man,  that 
conspicuousness,  prominence,  the  eye  of  the  world, 
are  not  essential  to  his  doing  a  man's  work.  These 
things  cumber  a  man.  Let  a  man  thank  God  if  he 
is  allowed  to  live  his  life  in  oblivion.  The  more  ob- 
livion, the  more  inconspicuousness  that  a  man  can 
surround  his  work  with,  the  more  likely  that  work 
is  to  be  powerful  and  efficient  in  the  world ;  for  the 
great  service  of  the  world  is  just  the  perception 


102  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

of  unperceived  opportunity,  the  vision  by  men 
of  the  Christ  whom  other  men  do  not  see,  in  the 
chances  and  opportunities  to  which  other  men  are 
blind.  As  I  have  studied  the  life  of  Chinese  Gor- 
don, it  has  seemed  to  me  that  it  must  have  been  this 
that  gave  the  distinctive  zest  and  glory  to  his  most 
attractive  character.  I  suppose  there  was  scarcely 
any  man  in  his  time,  or  perhaps  in  ours,  who  more 
held  the  worship  of  the  young  men  of  the  world  than 
Chinese  Gordon.  Huxley  used  to  speak  of  him  as 
one  of  the  two  greatest  men  he  ever  met,  a  man  of  a 
sort  of  divine  and  superhuman  unselfishness.  What 
was  it  that  made  him  great  ?  I  will  tell  you.  There 
are  three  monuments  to  Chinese  Gordon.  There 
is  the  statue  that  stands  in  Trafalgar  Square,  with 
the  poor,  sad  face  turned  towards  the  help  that  was 
not  to  come.  There  is  that  magnificent  inscription 
on  the  stone  in  St.  Paul's  that  I  suppose  many  of  you 
have  read.  x\nd  then  there  is  one  other  monument 
finer  still.  It  is  a  life  figure  of  Chinese  Gordon 
seated  on  a  dromedary,  planted  in  what  will  some 
day  be  the  center  of  the  city  of  Khartoum.  It  is 
now  in  the  great  gardens  just  back  of  the  palace. 
And  in  that  great  statue  the  face  of  Gordon  is  not 
turned  toward  the  Nile,  by  which  he  might  have  es- 
caped ;  it  is  not  turned  toward  Egypt,  through  which 
help  too  late  was  on  its  way;  it  is  turned,  with  the 
face  of  the  dromedary  on  which  he  is  mounted,  out 
toward  the  great  desert,  whose  voice  he  alone  heard, 
whose  opportunities  he  alone  saw.  That,  as  !N"ew- 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  103 

bolt  puts  it  in  his  lines  on  Gordon,  was  the  real  great- 
ness of  the  man : 

"  For  this  man  was  not  great  by  gold  or  royal  state, 
By  sharp  sword  or  knowledge  of  earth's  wonder: 
But,  more  than  all  his  race,  he  saw  life  face  to  face, 
And  heard>he  still  small  voice  above  its  thunder." 

Rising  from  those  black  throats  there  in  the  Sou- 
dan, Chinese  Gordon  heard  the  voice  of-  Jesus 
Christ  calling.  He  will  stand  at  last  among  those 
who,  in  giving  to  the  thirsty,  gave  water  to  Christ; 
in  giving  to  the  hungry,  gave  bread  to  Christ;  in 
grasping  the  great  unselfish  opportunities  of  his  life, 
served  Jesus  Christ  his  Lord. 

And  so  I  make  my  appeal  to  you  young  men  and 
women  here  to-day.  Are  you  going  to  choose  some 
half-spiritual,  some  quarter-moral  life-calling,  when 
you  have  before  you  the  possibility  of  feeding  your 
life  with  all  its  powers  into  the  great  moral  and  spirit- 
ual movements  of  the  world,  those  movements  that  are 
really  shaping  and  transforming  the  world  ?  If  you 
have  now  a  chance  to  identify  your  life  with  one  of 
these,  are  you  going  to  turn  away  and  deafen  your 
ears  to  the  Christ  who  is  calling,  and  blind  your  eyes 
to  the  Christ  who  is  standing  here  ? 

And,  after  all,  what  do  we  know  about  what  is 
prominent  and  what  is  inconspicuous  ?  We  say  that 
a  thing  is  notable,  but  what  do  we  mean  by  that? 
We  mean  that  a  few  millions  of  people  now  think  it 
is  notable.  What  about  that  great  crowd  of  wit- 
nesses around  us  who  look  down  upon  all  that  goes 


104  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

on  here  in  this  world  of  ours  ?  How  vastly  they  out- 
number this  little  company  here  whose  knowledge  of 
the  thing,  we  say,  makes  it  great  and  notable !  Our 
Lord  has  told  us  that  the  day  will  come  when  the 
things  whispered  in  the  ear  will  be  proclaimed  from 
the  housetop,  and  when  the  things  spoken  in  the 
darkness  will  be  blazed  abroad  in  the  light.  In  that 
hour,  the  hidden  heart  that  served  Jesus  Christ,  whom 
it  saw  in  the  unadvertised  opportunities  that  came 
to  it,  in  the  inconspicuousness  and  the  oblivion  that 
are  essential  to  the  highest  moral  power,  will  be 
shown  to  be  the  great  and  the  potent  life.  Well  will 
it  be  for  us  if  in  that  day  when  we  face  Christ  we 
can  say:  "O  Lord,  I  recognized  Thee  there;  T.  saw 
Thee  in  those  opportunities;  I  was  not  one  of  the 
deceived.  When  saw  I  Thee?  All  through  my  life 
I  saw  Thee,  and  I  laid  out  my  life  for  Thee."  If 
something  should  cut  our  life  off  short  to-night,  could 
we  say  that?  How  do  we  know  that  something  will 
not  cut  it  off  short  very  soon  ?  For  my  part,  I  would 
pray  for  grace  so  to  live  that  though  like  the  sharp- 
ness of  the  sun-setting  the  end  should  come,  I  should 
be  able  to  say  that  I  had  seen  Christ  here  long  before 
I  saw  Him  there.  How  can  we  tolerate  any  other 
principle  ? 

I  trust  that  the  line  of  thought  we  have  been  fol- 
lowing has  made  it  clear  that  the  invisibility  of  the 
forms  of  influence,  the  use  of  which  constituted  the 
highest  forms  of  service  in  Jesus'  view,  does  not 
make  those  forms  of  influence  unimportant.  On  the 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  105 

other  hand,  their  invisibility  is  the  sign  of  their 
superior  power.  I  heard  Professor  Peabody  in  Ap- 
pleton  Chapel,  at  Harvard,  some  years  ago  speaking 
on  the  words  of  our  Lord  in  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  "Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth.  Ye  are  the 
light  of  the  world."  And  he  told  of  a  horseback 
journey  which  his  friend  Professor  Thayer  and  he 
had  taken  across  Asia  Minor  down  to  the  Mediterra- 
nean Sea.  For  some  days  they  had  ridden  along 
through  a  desolate  country,  now  and  then  passing 
through  villages  which  were  mere  collections  of  half 
underground  hovels.  The  children  played  in  rags 
and  filth  in  the  streets.  The  women  fled  half  clad 
at  the  approach  of  a  man,  and  all  was  poverty  and 
wretchedness.  Then  one  day  they  suddenly  drew 
rein  in  a  village  of  a  totally  different  character.  The 
homes  were  neat  and  thrifty ;  the  children  clean  and 
intelligent;  the  women,  neatly  dressed,  stood  un- 
abashed in  their  doorways,  and  a  general  air  of  well- 
being  and  self-respect  prevailed.  Professor  Peabody 
said  that  he  and  his  friend  at  once  noted  the  differ- 
ence and  exclaimed  upon  it.  On  inquiry  they  learned 
that  this  new  village  was  just  fifty  miles  away  from 
the  nearest  mission  station,  which  had  been  estab- 
lished just  fifty  years,  and  whose  influence  had  ra- 
diated out  at  the  rate  of  about  a  mile  a  year,  work- 
ing transformation  where  it  came.  But  who  saw  it 
move  across  the  desert?  What  hand  could  have  felt 
it  ?  It  was  absolutely  nebulous  and  intangible,  that 
moving  influence ;  but  none  the  less  powerful  on  that 


io6  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

account;  on  that  account  all  the  more  powerful  be- 
cause irresistible  in  its  progress  and  in  the  subtlety 
and  persistence  of  its  action. 

Because  service  is  a  moral  and  spiritual  influence, 
a  passing  of  life  sacrificially  upon  life,  it  is  the  great- 
est and  strongest  thing  in  the  world.  Furthermore, 
it  is  within  the  reach  of  every  one.  No  quality  of 
Christian  character  can  be  essential  that  is  not  pos- 
sible to  every  man.  There  are  some  who  think  they 
can  do  nothing,  but  the  sort  of  service  of  which  I  am 
speaking  is  within  the  reach  and  duty  of  all.  Gor- 
don ever  dwelt  on  this.  "We  are  much  more  im- 
portant than  we  have  any  idea  of,"  he  wrote  to  his 
sister  from  the  Soudan  in  1875.  "Nothing  is  trivial 
that  is  unseen ;  it  is  only  the  material  things  of  life 
that  are  of  no  import."  "I  am  more  and  more  con- 
vinced," he  wrote  from  the  Soudan  two  years  later, 
"that  the  actions  we  see  done  are  but  trifles  in  com- 
parison with  the  thoughts  that  fill  us."  And  from 
Aden  he  wrote  in  1880,  "What  we  need  is  a  profound 
faith  in  God's  ruling  all  things ;  it  is  not  the  Duke  or 
Lord  Beaconsfield,  it  is  He  alone  who  rules.  Napo- 
leon,, in  a  book  lent  me  by  Watson,  says  'the  smallest 
trifles  produce  the  greatest  results.' '  In  a  world 
like  ours  no  one  may  know  the  limit  of  the  power  he 
is  exerting ;  each  of  us  may  be  sure  that  in  every  ex- 
penditure of  time  and  strength  and  life  to  influence 
others,  to  "catch  men,"  as  Jesus  said,  we  are  in  the 
way  of  effecting  vast  results.  In  his  essay  on  Why 
Do  Men  Stupefy  Themselves?  Tolstoi  says  of 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  107 

Brulof,  a  celebrated  Russian  painter,  that  he  "one 
day  corrected  a  pupil's  study.  The  pupil  having 
glanced  at  the  altered  drawing,  exclaimed,  'Why, 
you  only  touched  it  a  tiny  bit,  but  it  is  quite  another 
thing!'  Brulof  replied,  'Art  begins  where  the  tiny 
bit  begins.'  That  saying,"  says  Tolstoi,  "is  strik- 
ingly true,  not  of  art  alone,  but  of  all  life.  One  may 
say  that  true  life  begins  where  the  tiny  bit  begins — 
where  what  seem  to  us  minute  and  infinitely  small 
alterations  take  place.  True  life  is  not  lived  where 
great  external  changes  take  place,  where  people 
move  about,  clash,  fight,  and  slay  one  another ;  but  it 
is  lived  only  where  these  tiny,  infinitesimally  small 
changes  occur."  In  other  words,  each  quiet  man  and 
woman  who  is  going  about  using  life  to  help  other 
lives  is  living  the  great  life  and  wielding  the  great 
power. 

But  it  is  objected  to  this  ideal  of  life  not  only 
that  it  is  nebulous  and  intangible,  but  that  there  is 
no  money  in  it.  And  that  is  a  fatal  objection  in  our 
day.  Men  need  money.  Life  is  more  rich  and  ex- 
acting. And  all  things  cost  more.  Not  only  has  the 
list  of  necessities  immensely  expanded,  but  there  are 
so  many  new  toys,  motor  cars,  and  games  of  many 
kinds,  very  good  and  wholesome  in  many  ways, 
which  eat  up  money  as  the  parched  ground  drinks 
rain.  All  around  us  are  people  with  ease  and  leisure, 
nice  people  and  kind  and  high-minded  who  have  time 
to  be  nice  and  cultured  and  kind  because,  as  a  social- 
ist put  it,  other  people  are  willing  to  go  without  leis- 


io8  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

ure  and  to  slave.  But  many  of  those  who  are  thus 
slaving  are  doing  it  in  the  hope  in  time  of  winning 
their  own  wealth.  If  there  is  money  in  the  job  it 
is  popular;  if  there  is  no  money  in  it,  the  man  who 
takes  it  must  have  a  dash  of  the  fanatic  in  him. 
Well,  probably  he  has.  People  thought  the  Savior 
had  in  His  day  and  His  disciples  after  Him.  There 
was  no  money  in  "catching  men"  for  any  of  them. 
One  of  them  made  a  little  out  of  a  transaction  over 
a  man,  but  the  amount  was  small,  only  thirty  silver 
pieces,  and,  on  second  thought,  the  bargain  sickened 
him  so  that  he  made  way  with  himself.  None  of  the 
others  ever  made  a  farthing  out  of  the  business.  And 
there  is  no  money  in  it  to-day,  but  money  is  not  one 
of  the  essentials  of  Christian  character,  and  if  any 
one  thinks  it  is  the  indispensable  thing,  I  fear  he  will 
be  disgusted  with  the  view  that  truth  and  purity  and 
service  are  not  to  be  mentioned  in  the  same  breath 
with  it. 

Not  only  is  there  no  money  in  the  pursuit  of 
Christ's  ideal  of  a  ministering  life,  but  there  are 
many  disappointments  in  it.  Jesus  Himself  found 
it  so.  He  came  to  His  own,  we  are  told  sadly,  and 
His  own  received  Him  not.  By  truth  and  by  life 
God  had  for  centuries  wrought  at  the  education  of 
Israel,  in  part  to  prepare  a  vocabulary  for  the  Gos- 
pel, without  which  it  could  not  be  uttered  in  men's 
speech,  in  part  to  prepare  a  nucleus  of  men  to  re- 
ceive the  new  truth  and  life  which  were  to  come  in 
the  Gospel.  The  vocabulary  was  ready  when  Jesus 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  109 

came,  but  the  number  of  men  who  were  prepared  to 
apprehend  the  new  meanings  which  were  now  to  ex- 
pand the  old  terms  was  disappointingly  few.  The 
education  of  the  nation  as  a  whole  had  failed.  Even 
God  seemed  to  have  laid  out  His  life  in  vain.  And 
Jesus  had  the  same  crushing  experience  throughout. 
He  would  heal  ten  lepers.  Only  one  would  repay 
His  priceless  service  with  a  word  of  thanks.  Some 
hearts  which  He  met  He  coveted  for  the  life  that  is 
life,  and  they  failed  Him.  His  own  disciples  mis- 
conceived His  purposes  and  were  blind  alike  to  His 
intimations  and  His  plainest  teachings.  They  all 
abandoned  Him  at  the  last  and  He  died  a  pitiful  and 
shameful  death  alone.  But  He  never  lost  faith  in 
His  method  and  ideal,  and  the  results  have  vindi- 
cated Him.  The  man  who  would  follow  Christ  will 
indeed  have  to  follow  Him.  He  will  pour  out  his 
life  where  the  sacrifice  seems  to  be  fruitless  and  His 
service  will  often  be  a  suffering,  and  it  will  seem  to 
him  nothing  more. 

And  the  suffering  will  spring  not  only  from  dis- 
appointment at  the  apparently  wasted  outlay  of  life, 
but  also  from  the  crushing  burden  of  responsibility. 
Some  one  once  asked  Quintin  Hogg,  the  founder  of 
the  Polytechnic  Institute  in  London,  who  had  de- 
voted a  great  fortune  to  that  enterprise,  how  much  it 
cost  to  build  up  such  an  institution.  "Not  very 
much,"  was  Mr.  Hogg's  reply,  "simply  one  man's 
life  blood."  That  is  what  all  service  costs.  The 
redemption  of  the  world  cost  the  Savior's  life  blood. 


no  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

All  Christ-like  service  must  bear  the  same  burden. 
The  men  who  carry  everything  easily,  to  whom  life 
is  a  sort  of  jest,  who  feel  the  weight  of  the  world's 
need  lightly  upon  their  hearts — how  can  such  men 
serve  with  the  service  whose  power  is  paid  for  in 
pain  ?  I  do  not  mean  that  we  are  not  to  serve  with 
pleased  hearts  and  to  cream  off  the  hardness  of  life 
with  playfulness,  for  I  believe  we  are.  That  Swede 
was  a  Christian  man,  who  was  urged  by  friends  to 
give  up  the  idea  of  going  as  a  missionary  to  India 
because  it  was  so  hot  there.  "Man,"  he  was  urged, 
"it  is  120°  in  the  shade."  "Veil,"  said  the  Swede, 
in  noble  contempt,  "ve  do  n't  always  have  to  stay  in 
the  shade,  do  ve  ?"  But  this  is  not  the  same  as  evad- 
ing the  responsibility  of  service;  it  is  scorning  the 
evasion.  And  we  may  be  sure  that  if  there  is  to  be 
any  real  service,  the  heavy  sense  of  burden,  the  pres- 
sure of  soul,  the  consciousness  that  the  price  of  life 
is  life,  must  be  with  the  man.  It  was  with  Paul  and 
it  was  what  gave  him  power. 

"Oft  when  the  word  is  on  me  to  deliver, 

Lifts  the  illusion  and  the  truth  lies  bare ; 
Desert  or  throng,  the  city  or  the  river, 
Melts  in  a  lucid  paradise  of  air. 

"  Only  like  souls  I  see  the  folk  thereunder 

Bound  who  should  conquer,  slaves  who  should 

be  kings, 

Hearing  their  one  hope  with  an  empty  wonder, 
Sadly  contented  in  a  show  of  things. 

"  Then  with  a  rush  the  intolerable  craving 

divers  throughout  me  like  a  trumpet  call, 
O  to  save  these,  to  perish  for  their  saving, 
Die  for  their  life,  be  offered  for  them  all!" 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  in 

If  there  are  any  who  will  not  suffer  for  others, 
then  Christ's  ideal  of  life  and  its  use  will  appeal  in 
vain  to  them.  But  such  turn  aside  from  all  life. 

"For  all  through  life  I  see  a  cross, 

Where  sons  of  God  yield  up  their  breath ; 

There  is  no  gain  except  by  loss, 
There  is  no  life  except  by  death ; 

There  is  no  vision  except  by  faith, 
Nor  glory  but  by  bearing  shame, 
Nor  justice  but  by  taking  blame ; 

And  that  Eternal  Passion  saith 
'  Be  emptied  of  glory  and  right  and  name.' " 

I  have  said  before  that  service  is  the  sacrificial  use 
of  life,  that  is,  the  divine  use.  The  fact  that 
such  service  as  this  is  the  divinest  thing  in  the  world 
ought  in  itself  to  be  enough  to  persuade  us  to  it,  but 
if  it  is  not,  what  can  be  said  ? 

Well,  it  can  be  said  that  such  a  common  ideal  of 
life  and  its  purpose  furnishes  the  only  basis  for  the 
richest  friendships.  In  his  address  at  the  inaugura- 
tion of  President  Gilman,  of  Johns  Hopkins  Univer- 
sity, President  Eliot  congratulated  Dr.  Gilman  on 
the  association  with  high-minded  and  unselfish  men, 
which  his  profession  and  new  duties  would  bring  to 
him.  "It  is  a  precious  privilege,"  he  said,  "that  in 
your  ordinary  work  you  will  have  to  do  only  with 
men  of  refinement  and  honor."  The  nobler  the  basis 
of  human  associations,  the  richer  and  more  fruitful 
the  relationships  between  men.  And  no  basis  can  be 
nobler  than  the  basis  of  sacrificial  service.  Such 
community  of  principle  makes  men  one,  and  gives 


H2  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

them  the  sweetest  and  most  enduing  of  bonds. 
Among  the  first  disciples  common  ownership  of  prop-" 
erty  was  a  natural  and  practicable  arrangement  be- 
cause that  society  was  so  unified  by  a  common  devo- 
tion and  purpose.  Oneness  of  principle  and  ideal  is 
the  supreme  unifying  influence.  No  one  but  a  Chris- 
tian who  followed  Christ  wholly  in  the  purpose  and 
method  of  His  serving  life  could  have  written  our 
great  classic  on  friendship.  And  only  Christianity 
holds  the  hope  of  a  real  human  brotherhood. 

Such  an  ideal  of  life  not  alone  opens  up  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  truest  human  intercourse,  but  also  of 
that  unselfish  ministry  to  others  which  is  the  closest 
bond  between  souls.  "Hearts  I  have  won,"  says  St. 
Paul  in  one  of  our  noblest  poems: 

"  Hearts  I  have  won  of  sister  and  of  brother 
Quick  on  the  earth  or  hidden  in  the  sod, 
Lo!  every  heart  awaiteth  me,  another 
Friend  in  the  blameless  family  of  God." 

What  gift  can  one  man  give  to  another,  compara- 
ble with  the  gift  of  his  own  life  ?  How  can  men  be 
more  closely  related  than  by  soul  and  by  that  com- 
munion of  soul  springing  from  the  impartation  of 
life  ?  Paul's  letters  are  full  of  his  deep  and  joyous 
consciousness  of  this.  He  and  his  converts  are  one, 
the  sufferings  and  blessings  of  each  are  shared  by 
all ;  no  sacrifice  is  too  great  for  any  one  to  make  for 
another;  they  are  one  body  jointly  framed  together 
and  compacted  by  that  which  each  several  part  sup- 
plieth.  And  what  was  true  then  was  true  then  be- 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  113 

cause  it  is  always  true.  The  fullest  human  inter- 
course is  between  men  who  have  helped  one  another 
to  God,  or  one  of  whom  has  led  the  other  to  life. 

And  this  service  to  which  Christ  calls  his-  men  is 
the  only  use  of  life  which  leaves  any  permanent  resi- 
duum. Nothing  else  lasts.  All  use  of  life  upon  ma- 
terial ends  alone  can  not  survive  the  inevitable  decay 
of  the  materials  on  which  it  wrought.  There  are 
great  and  noble  material  achievements  and  one  can 
not  resist  a  feeling  of  envy  at  those  who  have  wrought 
them.  Take  for  example  the  "Peryar  project"  of 
South  India.  The  irrigation  engineers  of  the  Brit- 
ish Government  diverted  a  large  river  which  had 
poured  its  treasure  of  water  westward  into  the  Arab- 
ian Sea,  so  that  it  ran  eastward  over  a  thirsty  land 
and  ultimately  emptied  into  the  Bay  of  Bengal  on 
the  opposite  side  of  India.  Dr.  Jones  tells  of  this 
great  work  in  his  admirable  book  on  India,  Krishna 
or  Christ,  and  he  adds :  "It  embraces  the  second 
largest  dam  in  the  world,  a  tunnel  one  and  one-fourth 
miles  through  the  mountain,  and  many  meters  of 
distributing  channels.  It  will  irrigate  at  least  150,- 
000  acres  for  rice  cultivation,  and  will  feed  400,000 
people.  I  live  in  the  heart  of  the  region  thus  fer- 
tilized and  know  the  joy  of  the  residents,  who  also 
stand  astonished  before  the  magic  power  of  the  white 
people  who  do  for  them  what,  they  say,  even  their 
gods  failed  to  accomplish."  Achievements  like  this 
are  worth  while.  But  after  all,  how  long  will  they 
last  ?  How  long  will  their  good  effects  last  ?  There 
8 


ii4  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

will  come  a  day  when  all  such  projects,  bridges,  tun- 
nels, material  feats  of  whatsoever  kind,  will  be  rolled 
up  as  a  man  rolls  up  a  garment,  or  a  scrap  of  paper 
to  throw  away.  But  life  does  not  end.  Whatever 
we  do  in  life  we  do  for  eternity.  All  the  soul  a  man 
lays  out  on  other  souls  is  work  done  forever.  And 
the  material  achievements  are  well  enough  as  con- 
trivances to  pay  expenses,  but  the  life  of  a  man  can 
not  be  in  a  trade  or  in  any  material  accomplishments, 
however  great  and  beneficial.  It  must  be  in  what  he 
does  besides  this  and  back  of  this  to  mould  life.  "My 
trade,"  said  an  anarchist  in  Chicago  with  a  prophet- 
soul,  "my  trade  is  that  of  a  shoemaker.  My  calling 
is  a  propagandist."  Every  life  should  have  the  spirit 
of  the  propagandist  in  it.  That  is  the  spirit  of  serv- 
ice by  which  a  life  takes  its  principles,  dips  them  in 
its  heart's  blood  and  then  lays  them  all  quivering 
upon  the  hearts  of  other  men.  Such  work  abides 
forever. 

And  because  it  supports  the  highest  friendship 
and  the  richest  intercourse  and  lasts  forever  in  its 
result,  this  ideal  of  a  serving  life  is  also  and  accord- 
ingly the  only  thing  that  can  really  and  fully  satisfy. 
Keen  and  heavy  as  the  disappointments  of  our  Lord's 
life  were,  He  yet  lived  and  died  a  satisfying  and 
satisfied  life.  At  the  close  of  it  as  He  looked  back 
He  gave  expression  to  His  satisfaction.  He  had  ful- 
filled His  mission.  He  had  done  His  work.  He  was 
sustained  by  the  nourishment  of  the  great  principle 
of  service  by  which  He  lived.  That  had  been  His 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  115 

meat  and  His  drink.  He  was  entirely  content.  "It 
is  finished,"  was  one  of  His  last  words.  He  had  sat- 
isfactorily completed  the  living  of  His  life.  No  ex- 
penditure of  life  upon  things  can  ever  give  this  satis- 
faction. 

This  satisfaction  is  denied  to  no  man.  Not  every 
man  is  called  to  professional  Christian  service  in 
the  ministry  or  any  similar  calling,  but  every  man  is 
called  to  live  his  life  for  life  whatever  his  occupa- 
tion may  be.  There  are  many  men  in  professional 
Christian  service  who  are  living  the  mateiial  life. 
They  are  engrossed  in  the  formal  methods  of  their 
work,  in  the  ceremonial  of  their  worship,  in  their 
habiliments  or  performances,  and  so  far  as  they  live 
in  and  for  these  things  they  are  not  living  by  this 
ideal  of  service.  That  is  an  ideal  of  life  and  any 
man  who  lives  by  it  lives  a  Christlike  life,  no  matter 
what  his  business  or  trade. 

And  there  are  no  degrees  of  glory  or  nobility  in 
the  living  of  this  life.  One  man  has  no  superior 
honor  because  his  service  is  more  notable  or  far-reach- 
ing than  another  man's.  The  one  essential  thing  is 
the  full  acceptance  by  the  man  of  the  principle.  All 
who  accept  it  with  equal  sincerity  and  are  ruled  by 
it  with  equal  conscientiousness  live  witfi  equal  honor 
and  nobility.  "Every  one,"  wrote  Gordon  to  his  sis- 
ter from  Joppa  in  1883,  "is  doing  work  quite  as  im- 
portant as  any  one  else,  whether  on  a  sick  bed  or  as 
Viceroy  of  India ;  it  is  our  folly  which  makes  us 
think  otherwise." 


n6  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

Many  of  us  cause  ourselves  distress  by  our  mis- 
conceptions here.  We  exalt  the  framework  above 
the  inward  principle,  and  think  that  one  man's  mis- 
sion and  service  are  nobler  than  another  man's  be- 
cause the  setting  of  his  life  is  more  notable  or  glor- 
ious; but  God  has,  of  course,  His  own  purpose  for 
each  life  and  man's  estimate  of  the  comparative  at- 
tractiveness of  different  forms  is  of  no  relevancy. 
The  one  essential  thing  is  to  find  God's  dominant  de- 
sire for  us  and  to  subject  our  lives  and  all  their  ways 
to  that.  Whether  one  man  or  another  man  is  as- 
signed a  particular  work  is  of  no  consequence.  The 
vital  thing  is  that  each  man  realize  that  his  life  is 
an  assignment  of  God,  whatever  the  assignment  may 
be.  So  the  work  is  done,  the  service  rendered,  what 
matter  is  it  who  has  the  name  and  the  fame  of  it,  if 
only  we  did  cleanly  the  part  which  God  gave  us  to  do  ? 
Our  good  Christian  poet  has  put  it  in  a  Christian 
way  in  My  Triumph : 

"Let  the  thick  curtain  fall; 
I  better  know  than  all 
How  little  I  have  gained, 
How  vast  the  unattained. 

"  Others  shall  sing  the  song, 
Others  shall  right  the  wrong, — 
Finish  what  I  begin, 
And  all  I  fail  of  win. 

"  What  matter,  I  or  they? 
Mine  or  another's  day, 
So  the  right  word  be  said 
And  life  the  sweeter  made? 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  117 

"  Ring,  bells  in  unreared  steeples, 
The  joy  of  unborn  peoples ! 
Sound,  trumpets  far  off  blown, 
Your  triumph  is  my  own !" 

Into  this  living  divinely-appointed  service  men 
are  meant  to  pour  their  lives  unwithholdingly.  From 
His  boyhood,  our  Lord  went  earnestly  about  His 
Father's  business.  In  His  manhood  the  zeal  of  His 
Father's  house  consumed  Him.  His  own  words 
best  express  the  spirit  in  which  His  duty  was  done. 
"I  must  work  the  works  of  Him  which  sent  me  while 
it  is  day,  for  the  night  is  coming  when  no  man  can 
work."  And  His  work  was  the  lavish  outlay  of  Him- 
self upon  men.  The  bread  which  He  gave  was  His 
flesh  for  the  life  of  the  world.  The  water  which  He 
gave  was  His  blood  for  the  thirst  of  the  world.  With- 
out stint  He  poured  out  Himself  and  while  still  a 
young  man  fulfilled  His  work.  "I  have  the  lines 
drawn  and  the  current  flowing,"  said  Samuel  Bowles 
once  when  his  friends  remonstrated  with  him  and 
urged  him  to  lay  down  his  work,  "and  by  throwing 
my  weight  here  now  I  can  count  for  something.  If 
I  made  a  long  break  or  parenthesis  to  get  strong,  I 
should  lose  my  opportunity.  No  man  is  living  a 
life  worth  living  unless  he  is  willing,  if  need  be,  to 
die  for  somebody  or  something."  Indeed,  all  true 
living  is  a  dying,  a  passing  out  of  a  man's  life  from 
him  daily  into  the  lives  of  others.  It  must  of  neces- 
sity be  an  intense  thing.  The  very  idea  of  real  serv- 
ice as  a  communication  of  life  precludes  the  idea  of 
tameness  and  torpor. 


n8  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

And  now  I  put  the  question:  Is  this  service  a 
characteristic  of  our  Christian  manhood?  Are  we 
conceiving  of  our  lives  and  their  use  in  this  great 
way  ?  This  we  may  be  sure  was  what  life  was  given 
to  us  for  us.  It  was  not  given  for  ease  or  for  pleasure. 

"  'Tis  not  for  man  to  trifle ;  life  is  brief, 

And  sin  is  here. 
Our  age  is  but  the  falling  of  a  leaf, 

A  dropping  tear. 

We  have  no  time  to  sport  away  the  hours, 
All  must  be  earnest  in  a  world  like  ours. 

Not  many  lives,  but  only  one  have  we, 

One,  only  one, 
How  earnest  should  that  one  life  be, 

That  narrow  span ; 
Day  after  day  spent  in  blessed  toil, 
Hour  after  hour  still  bringing  in  new  spoil." 

And  we  should  use  life  for  that  for  which  it  was 
given  to  us;  to  serve  God  and  men  by  its  living  ex- 
penditure. Shall  we  make  this  our  purpose:  "I 
will  make  the  expenditure  of  my  life,  not  control 
over  other  lives,  the  principle  of  my  work?  I  will 
do  no  harm  with  my  life.  I  will  live  it  for  life,  for 
the  enlargement  of  life,  for  the  eternal  glory  of  life 
unending,  in  me  and  others."  This  is  the  Christian 
ideal  which  is  the  will  of  God  for  us  all.  That  will 
is  full  character.  For  that  will  we  were  made. 

I  can  not  express  it  more  nobly  than  in  good  old 
Professor  Simpson's  words,  as  a  year  ago  he  laid  down 
his  chair  in  the  medical  school  of  the  University  of 
Edinburgh  and  the  deanship  of  the  medical  faculty, 


Service:  Living  Use  of  Life  119 

and  presented  the  graduating  class  of  the  year 
for  their  degrees :  "It  may  chance,"  said  he,  "that 
some  July  day  far  down  the  century,  when  I  have 
long  been  in  the  ether,  one  or  other  of  you  will  talk 
with  child  or  grandchild  of  the  years  when  the  cen- 
tury was  young.  Among  its  unforgotten  scenes 
there  will  rise  before  your  mind  the  memory  of  the 
day  when  at  last  you  burst  the  chrysalis  shell  of  pupil- 
age to  lift  free  wings  into  the  azure.  You  will  re- 
call the  unusual  concurrence  of  the  simultaneous 
leave-taking  of  the  University  by  the  graduates  and 
their  promoter.  'We  came  away/  you  will  say  to  the 
child,  'a  goodly  company  all  together  through  the 
gateway  that  leads  to  the  rosy  dawn.  He  passed  out 
all  alone  through  the  door  that  looks  to  the  sunset 
and  the  evening  star.  He  was  an  old  man  like  me/ 
I  forehear  you  say,  'not  in  himself  a  great  man.  He 
had  been  the  friend  of  great  men  and  came  out  of  a 
great  time  in  the  nineteenth  century  "when  there  was 
niidsea  and  the  mighty  things"  and  it  looked  to  the 
men  of  his  generation  as  if  old  things  had  passed 
away  and  a  new  world  begun.  And  he  told  us  that 
the  great  lesson  he  had  learned  on  his  way  through 
life  was  the  same  that  the  disciple  who  leaned  on 
Jesus'  breast  at  supper  taught  to  the  fathers,  the 
young  men,  and  the  little  children  of  his  time,  when 
he  said,  "The  world  passeth  away  and  the  lust 
thereof,  but  he  that  doeth  the  will  of  God  abideth 
forever." ' " 


FREEDOM 

THE  NECESSITY  OF  A  MAEQIN 


The  'eathen  in  'is  blindness  bows  down  to  wood  and  ston& 
'E  don't  obey  no  orders  unless  they  is  'is  own  ; 
'E  keeps  'is  side  arms  awful :  'e  leaves  'em  all  about, 
An'  then  comes  up  the  regiment  an'  pokes  the  'eathen  out. 
All  along  o'  dirtiness,  all  along  o'  mess, 
All  along  o'  doin'  things  rather-more-or-less, 
All  along  of  abby-nay,  kul,  and  hazar-jo, 
Mind  you  keep  your  rifle  an'  yourself  jus'  so ! 

' — RUDYARD  KIPLING,  "  The  'Eathen" 


He   could  practice  abstinence,  but  not  temperance. — 
BOSWELL,  "  The  Life  of  Samuel  Johnson. 


IV 


IN  political  geography  there  are  two  kinds  of 
boundaries,  established  and  unestablished.  Between 
Persia  on  the  north  and  Russia  on  the  south,  for 
example,  the  boundary  is  settled  and  determined. 
Everybody  knows  which  is  which.  But  between  Per- 
sia on  the  west  and  Turkey  on  the  east  the  boundary 
can  scarcely  be  said  even  yet  to  be  fixed.  There  is 
no  land  there  that  is  no  man's  land.  All  that  there 
is  belongs  either  to  Persia  or  Turkey,  but  regarding 
parts  of  it  there  have  been  and  are  now  disputes  as  to 
whether  this  strip  is  Persia's  or  Turkey's.  And  the 
people  living  in  such  debated  territory  may  be  in 
doubt  as  to  whether  they  really  live  in  Persia  or 
Turkey.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  almost  all  important 
boundary  lines  in  political  geography,  especially  na- 
tional boundaries,  are  now  well  established.  They 
became  so  readily  and  naturally  matters  of  dispute, 
that  by  mutual  arrangement,  by  friendly  commission, 
by  arbitration,  or  by  war,  practically  all  the  great 
boundaries  have  been  settled. 

But  established  boundaries  themselves  are  of  two 
kinds,  defined  and  undefined.  Between  Persia  and 
Russia  on  the  northwest,  for  example,  the  boundary 

123 


124  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

is  marked  by  the  Aras  River  and  is  evident  to  every 
one ;  but  on  the  northeast  it  is  not  marked  at  all.  It 
is  simply  a  surveyed  line  running  across  a  desert 
country,  established,  but  invisible.  Or  to  take  an  il- 
lustration nearer  home.  Between  the  State  of  Ohio 
and  the  State  of  Kentucky  the  boundary  is  estab- 
lished and  defined.  Any  one  crossing  from  one  State 
into  the  other  would  know  it,  if  not  otherwise,  by  the 
fact  of  his  wet  feet.  But  between  the  State  of  Ohio 
and  the  State  of  Indiana,  while  the  boundary  is 
equally  well  established,  it  is  not  defined  at  all  to 
the  traveler.  Any  man  might  easily  pass  from  one 
state  into  the  other  without  knowing  that  he  had 
crossed  the  line  and  without  intending  to  do  so  at  all. 

These  characteristics  and  distinctions  in  political 
boundaries  can  be  carried  right  over  into  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  life.  Between  mathematical  truth 
and  mathematical  error,  for  example,  the  boundary 
is  absolutely  fixed.  Any  man  with  the  adequate 
•equipment  to  locate  it  will  have  no  difficulty  in  draw- 
ing the  exact  line.  But  between  sanity  and  insanity 
there  is  no  such  established  boundary,  and  with  ref- 
erence to  some  particular  case  two  equally  capable 
and  equally  conscientious  alienists  might  differ  as  to 
whether  the  man  was  actually  insane  or  sane. 

And  so  likewise  in  the  moral  life.  Between  ab- 
stinence and  temperance,  not  only  in  the  matter  of 
drink,  but  in  all  questions,  there  is  a  boundary  line 
both  established  and  defined.  No  one  will  ever  have 
any  difficulty  in  perceiving  this  line.  A  blind  man 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  125 

can  locate  it.  But  between  temperance  and  excess 
there  is  no  such  line  at  all,  and  a  man  may  pass  from 
the  country  of  temperance  into  the  country  of  excess 
without  any  intention  of  doing  so,  with  indeed  the 
firmest  purpose  to  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  It  is  the 
invisibility  of  its  boundaries  that  makes  the  moral 
danger  of  residence  in  the  land  of  temperate  indul- 
gence so  fearfully  greater  than  the  Spartan  citizen- 
ship of  total  abstinence.  Men  do  not  mean  to  go 
over  from  temperance  to  excess.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  I  suppose  that  almost  no  one  ever  deliberately 
goes  over  the  boundary  into  excess,  meaning  to  do  so. 
He  only  gets  over  because  the  boundary  line  which 
he  has  crossed  was  unmarked  and  undetectable. 

!N"ow  I  suppose  that  most  of  the  moral  boundaries 
of  life  are  of  this  tmestablished,  or  if  established, 
undefined  kind.  There  are,  of  course,  many  moral 
boundaries  clearly  defined  and  so  unmistakably  plain 
that  no  one  is  excusable  in  transgressing  them.  The 
line  between  pure  and  impure  acts  is  one  of  these. 
As  a  debater  in  Parliament  once  suggested,  there  can 
not  be  such  a  thing  as  moderate  chastity.  The  line 
between  truth  and  falsehood  is  another.  All  on  one 
side  of  such  boundary  lines  is  fair  and  legitimate, 
and  all  on  the  other  wrong  and  unallowable.  A  man 
may  venture  right  up  to  the  boundary  with  no  fear 
of  possible  error  or  of  danger,  because  near  forbidden 
ground.  The  wall  or  chasm  between  the  two  spheres 
is  a  reminder  of  their  separation  so  effective  that  the 
man  of  right  will  is  in  no  danger  of  stepping  across 


126  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

unwittingly  or  negligently.  But  there  are  other 
moral  distinctions  that  are  not  so  clearly  denned. 
Between  the  open  country  of  what  is  unquestionably 
right  and  the  open  country  of  what  is  unquestion- 
ably wrong,  there  is  no  difficulty  in  distinguishing; 
between  the  heart  of  the  open  country  of  the  unques- 
tionably right  and  the  heart  of  the  open  country  of 
the  unquestionably  wrong  there  is  a  difference  as  of 
noonday  and  of  midnight,  but  near  the  boundary  the 
two  shade  off  into  each  other.  There  is  either  no  line 
at  all,  or  if  there  is  one  it  is  undefined,  and  we  may 
wander  over  from  one  land  into  the  other  with  no 
hindrance,  with  nothing  to  remind  us  where  we 
are  or  whither  we  are  going,  and  with  no  purpose  of 
crossing  the  line  at  all. 

Most  questions  of  adaptation  and  expediency  are 
of  this  character.  How  far  shall  we  accept  the  ways 
of  others  and  adjust  ourselves  to  them  in  order  to  ac- 
quire influence  over  them  and  lift  them  up  to  our 
ideals  and  convictions  ?  Where  is  the  boundary  line 
between  patience  and  pity  toward  those  who  err,  and 
reprobation  of  their  errors?  Where  is  the  line  be- 
tween a  proper  Christian  charity,  given  unstintedly 
to  the  needy,  and  the  development  of  the  spirit  of 
self-help  and  of  the  duty  of  bearing  one's  own  bur- 
dens ?  It  is,  I  repeat,  in  many  moral  problems  just 
as  it  is  in  physical  geography.  Between  two  lands 
there  may  be  a  mountain  range  so  bold  as  to  be  im- 
passable, and  between  two  other  lands  there  will  be 
no  boundary  barrier  at  all,  but  only  an  imaginary 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  127 

line  which  only  surveyors  can  discover,  running 
across  an  intermediate  country,  uniform  and  similar 
on  both  sides  of  the  line,  though  the  diverse  charac- 
ters of  the  divided  lands  may  be  absolutely  clear  and 
distinctive. 

And  it  is  not  only  in  questions  of  moral  expe- 
diency, it  is  also  in  questions  of  moral  principle 
that  we  have  the  two  types  of  boundaries.  There  are 
divergences  of  principle  radical  and  unmistakable. 
All  agree  that  certain  allowable  things  fall  on  one 
side  of  the  line  and  certain  forbidden  things  on  the 
other.  The  Ten  Commandments  are  an  illustration 
of  one  of  the  great  decisive  chasms  separating  true 
ways  from  false.  There  is  here  no  intermediate  mar- 
ginal land  of  twilight  and  uncertainty.  And  Jesus 
strove  to  establish  as  many  of  these  sharp  moral  dis- 
tinctions as  possible.  Many  men  like  to  gloss  over 
these  distinctions;  Jesus  never.  He  dispelled  illu- 
sion and  self-confusion  and  laid  bare  the  essential 
moral  issues  of  life.  He  drew  as  fine  and  sharp  and 
incisive  as  possible  the  separating  ethical  distinctions. 
He  repeatedly  set  off  in  keenest  and  most  discriminat- 
ing contrast  His  own  standards  and  spirit  with  the 
standards  and  spirit  of  the  world,  and  He  appealed 
to  men  to  commit  themselves  fearlessly  and  uncom- 
promisingly to  His  principles.  But  Jesus  recognized 
also  that  there  were  many  questions  where  it  was  not 
and  is  not  easy  to  perceive  the  line  of  boundary  or 
separation,  and  He  dealt  patiently  with  inquiries  ad- 
dressed to  Him  by  those  who  were  perplexed  in  such 


128  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

matters.  He  realized  that  in  practical  life  most  of 
our  problems  are  not  problems  of  sLarp  division  be- 
tween two  clearly  distinguished  courses,  one  ob- 
viously right  and  the  other  obviously  wrong.  He 
knew  that  the  discipline  of  our  life  is  found  in  the 
way  we  act  toward  the  open  and  debatable  things,  in 
the  attitude  we  take  up  toward  the  problems  of  the 
unestablished  or  undefined  boundary. 

And  here  according  to  His  wont,  He  issued  no 
prescriptive  rule.  He  set  forth  His  view  in  what 
might  be  called  the  principle  of  the  margin.  If  there 
was,  as  there  usually  is,  a  middle  marginal  land  open 
to  debate,  Jesus  urged  that  the  wise  course  was  to 
stay  far  enough  over  on  the  safe  side  to  be  out  of 
the  uncertain  fog  of  the  border  territory.  "Master," 
asked  one,  "if  my  brother  sin  against  me,  shall  I 
forgive  him  ?  Shall  it  be  seven  times  ?"  "Seventy 
times  seven,"  was  the  reply.  Was  it  not  possible  for 
a  man  to  follow  Christ  and  still  cling  to  some  rem- 
nants of  his  old  life  ?  "If  any  man  will  come  after 
Me  let  him  deny  himself  and  take  us  his  cross  and 
follow  me."  "If  thou  wouldst  be  perfect,  go,  sell  all 
that  thou  hast  and  come,  follow  me."  The  Lord  be- 
lieved in  discipleship  whose  devotion  was  unskimped. 
He  believed  also  in  character  which  took  no  risks  of 
compromise.  "It  were  better  for  a  man,"  He  urged, 
"to  give  up  a  hand  or  eye  and  enter  into  life  maimed 
or  blind,  than  having  two  hands  or  two  eyes  to  miss 
it."  And  he  twice  put  His  principle  in  the  mat- 
ter into  very  vivid  and  characteristically  simple 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  129 

statements :  "If  any  man  will  compel  thee  to  go  one 
mile  with  him,  go  with  him  two."  "When  ye  shall 
have  done  all  those  things  that  are  commanded  you, 
say,  We  are  unprofitable  servants,  we  have  done 
that  which  it  was  our  duty  to  do." 

Jesus,  of  course,  illustrated  His  principle  in  His 
own  life.  He  did  not  seek  to-  see  how  near  the  edge 
He  could  come.  He  kept  clear  of  the  moral  bounda- 
ries. He  lived  His  life  with  a  margin,  out  in  the 
open  of  unmistakable  purity  and  integrity.  Paul 
followed  his  Master's  principles  in  these  matters. 
He  would  run  no  risks  of  moral  trespass.  He  saw 
no  harm  for  example  in  eating  meat  that  had  been 
offered  to  idols.  But  others  felt  conscientious 
scruples  on  this  point.  If,  Paul  declared,  his  eating 
meat  was  open  to  the  possibility  of  offending  such 
people,  he  would  stop  such  indulgence  on  his  part  at 
once,  and  completely  and  forever.  Some  people 
would  have  delayed  and  argued.  It  is  easy  to  outline 
their  argument.  "It  is  not  wrong  in  itself  to  do  this. 
My  own  conscience  is  clear.  What  does  it  matter 
that  another  man  can  not  bear  what  I  can.  Let  him 
abstain.  I  can  indulge.  Furthermore,  I  can  avoid 
publicity.  It  will  not  be  known.  It  is  my  personal 
affair.  I  can  do  it  privately.  What  harm  will 
it  do  if  it  is  known  and  objected  to  by  some?  It 
will  soon  be  forgotten  and  the  chance  that  it  will  hurt 
any  one  is  negligible.  Moreover,  we  need  more  lib- 
erty in  these  things.  It  is  bad  to  concede  to  narrow- 
ness. It  is  drawing  lines  too  tight  to  exclude  what  is 
9 


130  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

really  innocent.  Even  if  it  is  an  open  question,  surely 
there  must  be  a  recognition  of  a  belt  of  debatable 
land  in  these  questions  between  the  right  that  is  ob- 
vious and  obligatory,  and  the  wrong  that  is  patent  and 
prohibited.  In  that  middle  country  there  must  be 
considerable  freedom  allowed  and  each  man  should  be 
left  to  decide  for  himself  there,  uncoerced  by  any  sup- 
posed principle  obtruded  where  everything  should  be 
a  matter  of  personal  liberty."  This  is  the  familiar 
form  of  reply.  Not  so,  we  answer.  There  is  a  great 
principle  which  obtrudes  itself  because  it  is  in  our 
moral  nature.  Paul  acted  on  it  in  this  matter  of  his 
personal  indulgences.  Our  Lord  pressed  it  on  men 
and  presses  it  on  us.  It  is  the  principle  of  the  moral 
margin,  of  staying  away  from  the  doubtful  borders, 
of  keeping  open  country  between  ourselves  and  the 
possible  boundaries.  I  have  spoken  of  truth,  purity, 
and  service  as  essentials  of  Christian  character.  I 
am  going  on  now  to  urge  that  these  things  are  neces- 
sary with  a  bonus,  and  that  with  reference  to  the 
entire  life  the  right  principle  and  the  essential  prin- 
ciple is  the  principle  of  the  moral  margin.  No  other 
principle  will  cover  life's  necessities. 

It  will  be  easy  to  illustrate  the  principle  in  its 
application  to  life  and  then  to  set  forth  the  solid  and 
convincing  reasons  for  it. 

Consider  it  first  of  all  in  the  matter  oif  duty. 
There  are  men  and  women  who  seem  to  think  that 
you  can  calculate  duty  to  a  nicety,  and  who  are  will- 
ing to  pay  down  just  exactly  the  full  toll  of  their 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  131 

duty,  not  a  fraction  over  and  not  a  fraction  less.  But 
you  can  not  calculate  duty  in  any  such  nice  mathe- 
matical way,  and  no  worthy  life  can  be  lived  on  the 
principle  of  such  Shylock  calculations,  nor  any  pub- 
lic duty  faithfully  done.  What  would  be  thought, 
for  example,  of  a  fire  company,  which  when  an  alarm 
came  in  would  first  try  to  calculate  precisely  the  na- 
ture and  extent  of  its  duty  in  the  circumstances, 
which  perhaps  kept  an  actuary  in  the  fire-house  for 
the  purpose,  who  would  telephone  to  the  scene  of  the 
supposed  fire  to  make  sure  whether  there  was  a  fire 
which  it  would  be  the  company's  duty  to  attend,  or 
how  far  it  had  progressed  and  the  time  it  would  take 
to  reach  it,  so  that  the  company  might  know  how  much 
longer  it  could  loiter  playing  dominoes  before  start- 
ing, and  still  arrive  before  the  fire  had  gone  beyond 
control  ?;  Rather  at  the  first  alarm,  every  man  leaps 
to  his  place  and  his  work,'  and  the  effort  is  to  arrive 
with  the  widest  possible  margin  between  them  and 
the  edge  of  their  duty.  If  there  were  any  way  of 
knowing  where  fires  were  going  to  break  out,  they 
would  be  there  in  advance  of  the  fire.  And  tl. 
principle  of  the  margin  of  duty  applies  to  perso 
life.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  between  Rr 
and  Japan,  I  had  among  my  friends  in  this  country 
a  Japanese  theological  student  in  the  seminary  at 
Auburn,  N.  Y.  Two  or  three  years  ago  he  came  to 
this  country  with  a  letter  of  introduction  from  a 
friend,  asking  me  to  aid  him  to  an  education.  He 
was  a  cavalry  lieutenant  in  the  second  line  of  the 


132  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

Japanese  reserves,  and  my  friend  said  lie  was  one  of 
the  best  young  Japanese  he  had  met  There  had  been 
in  the  Hill  School  at  Pottstown,  Pa.,  resident  for 
some  years,  a  young  Japanese  of  the  finest  Christian 
character,  who  had  recently  died,  leaving  a  blessed  and 
beloved  memory,  and  for  the  sake  of  this  Tozo  Ohno, 
Professor  Meigs  generously  took  Lieutenant  Rempei 
Minami  into  the  school.  By  his  genial  unselfishness 
and  his  flawless  honor  and  fidelity,  Rempei  endeared 
himself  to  every  one,  and  in  two  years,  after  perfect- 
ing his  English  there,  he  went  on  to  Auburn.  The  war 
broke  out  as  he  was  entering.  Within  a  few  weeks 
he  came  to  see  me  in  New  York  to  ask  for  help  to  re- 
turn to  Japan,  giving  his  promise,  which  was  as  good 
as  gold,  that  he  would  repay  it.  I  sent  him  to  Mr. 
Uchida,  the  Japanese  Consul-general,  but  he  was  un- 
able to  promise  more  to  the  many  Japanese  who  de- 
sired to  return  to  fight  for  their  country,  than  that 
his  government  would  care  for  them  after  they 
reached  Japanese  soil.  It  was  not  hard,  however,  to 
find  several  men  who  regarded  the  contribution  of  a 
soldier  to  the  armies  of  Japan  as  a  good  missionary 
investment,  and  Rempei  started  home.  I  asked 
him  why  he  was  in  such  a  hurry.  It  would  be  some 
time  before  his  line  of  the  reserves  would  be  called 
out.  Yes,  he  said,  he  knew  that,  but  he  had  received 
letters  from  his  father  and  from  his  prospective 
father-dn-law,  who  both  said  that  any  son  of  theirs 
would  be  on  hand  not  when  he  was  called  for,  but 
in  advance  of  his  duty.  That  was  exactly  to  Rempei 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  133 

.Minami's  own  mind,  and  he  went  to  be  there  with  a 
margin  to  spare.  I  heard  from  him  in  the  depths  of 
the  winter  from  the  Manchurian  campaign.  I  was 
told  by  a  Japanese  that  he  had  lost  a  hand  from  the 
rigors  of  the  winter.  He  fought  with  Oku's  division 
in  the  fiercest  fighting  of  the  battle  of  Mukden.  I 
did  not  know  for  some  time  whether  he  had  returned 
to  Japan  or  was  filling  a  soldier's  grave  on  the  plains 
of  Manchuria,  but  I  did  know  that  whether  he  was 
living  or  dead,  like  the  Christian  man  that  he  was, 
he  did  his  duty  and  something  more.  This  is  the 
law  of  the  Christian  character. 

Consider  it  in  the  second  place  in  the  matter  of 
fidelity  and  business  honesty.  There  are  men  and 
women  who  think  that  all  that  is  required  of  them 
is  to  live  up  to  the  standards  of  the  community  or  of 
the  social  set  in  which  they  move.  There  is  a  public 
morality  which  is  content  with  the  evasion  of  indict- 
ment, or,  at  least,  of  conviction  under  the  criminal 
statutes.  "There  are  men,"  said  Mr.  Roosevelt  in 
once  of  his  Southern  speeches,  "who  do  not  divide 
actions  merely  into  those  that  are  honest  and  those 
that  are  not,  but  create  a  third  subdivision,  that  of 
'law  honesty,'  of  that  kind  of  honesty  which  con- 
sists in  keeping  clear  of  the  penitentiary."  Men 
who  think  that  all  that  is  required  of  them  is  to  keep 
within  the  letter  of  the  law  constitute  one  of  the 
most  dangerous  classes  of  our  population.  And  law- 
yers who  sell  their  brains  to  show  other  men  how  to 
do  wrong  things  without  running  the  risk  of  punish- 


134  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

raent  for  it  are  among  our  most  conspicuous  national 
enemies.  The  laws  of  the  land  interpreted  as  skillful 
paid  counsel  of  unpatriotic  men  may  get  them  in- 
terpreted, are  no  fit  standards  for  a  man.  He  wants 
a  big  margin  of  decency  and  righteousness  over 
this, — a  big  margin  even  over  those  standards  inter- 
preted in  the  noblest  way.  "Law  honesty"  comes  a 
long  margin  short  of  being  honesty,  plain  common 
honesty.  That  is  "law  honesty"  with  a  big  margin 
over.  And  there  are  people  who  think  that  nothing 
more  is  required  of  men  and  women  in  private  life 
than  compliance  with  the  common  social  code.  Mr. 
Kato,  when  president  of  the  University  of  Tokyo,  is 
reported  to  have  made  a  speech  in  which  he  said  that 
young  men  ought  to  be  content  with  the  standards 
embodied  in  the  laws.  There  was  something  gro- 
tesque, in  his  view,  in  a  young  man's  exacting  more  of 
himself  than  this.  But  in  the  Christian  view  it  is 
grotesque  to  be  satisfied  with  so  little.  The  Chris- 
tian ideals  of  fidelity  and  honesty  take  society's 
ideals  and  double  them. 

We  live  in  a  day  when  this  Christian  principle 
of  the  margin  of  honesty  in  business  relations  ought 
to  be  driven  home  into  the  conscience.  There  was  "an 
interesting  interview  with  Mr.  John  W.  Gates  in  the 
New  York  Sun  for  August  16,  1902.  Mr.  Gates  is 
one  of  our  most  conspicuous,  some  would  say  one  of 
our  most  notorious  speculators,  and  he  set  forth 
frankly  his  ethical  conceptions:  "They  talk  about 
suppressing  or  doing  away  with  gambling.  They 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  135 

might  as  well  try  to  do  away  with  the  wind.  Men 
have  always  gambled  and  always  will,  and  if  I  had 
my  way,  I  'd  license  gambling  as  saloons  are  licensed. 
I  'd  do  this  because  I  think  it 's  right  Marshall 
Field  once  told  me  that  he  always  tried  to  be  right 
51  per  cent  of  the  time.  That  same  Marshall  Field 
is  one  of  the  greatest  business  men  in  this  country, 
and,  I  believe,  the  third  richest  man  in  the  world." 
Xow  one  may  be  allowed  to  doubt  whether  Mr.  Field 
ever  said  anything  of  the  kind  to  Mr.  Gates.  Mr. 
Field  was  an  honest  man  in  business ;  100  per  cent — 
no  more.  It  is  said  that  he  would  not  go  one  hair's 
breadth  beyond  the  line  of  scrupulously  exact  obliga- 
tion, but  he  would  not  fall  a  hair  breadth  short.  He 
had  no  margin.  When  Mr.  Gates  said  he  was  honest 
51  per  cent  of  the  time,  I  imagine  it  was  simply  a 
bit  of  ingenuous  autobiography  on  Mr.  Gates's  own 
part,  only  the  popular  impression  prevails  that  Mr. 
Gates  sometimes  gets  the  one  per  cent  on  the  other 
side  of  the  line.  But  51  per  cent  will  not  satisfy  the 
Christian  ideal.  Neither  will  100  per  cent.  The 
Christian  pound  is  short  at  sixteen  ounces,  and  no 
eight-hour  day  is  recognized  in  the  Christian  code. 
I  have  a  friend  who  is  a  graduate  of  Yale  and  one 
of  the  heads  now  of  a  great  Western  banking  house. 
He  told  me  once  that  on  leaving  Yale  and  applying 
for  a  job  in  this  house  he  was  accepted  as  one  of  the 
office  boys.  It  was  menial  drudgery.  He  left  homo 
at  5.30  in  the  morning  and  he  got  back  at  8.30  in 
the  evening.  The  ordinary  labor  union  would  not 


136  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

stand  for  such  fidelity  and  industry  in  its  member- 
ship. My  friend  worked  for  a  long  time  in  this  way, 
getting  to  the  office  ahead  of  time,  staying  after 
hours,  and  when  at  last  a  boy  dropped  out  he  went 
to  his  superior  and  said,  "You  do  not  need  to  employ 
another  boy  in  that  boy's  place;  let  me  do  his  work 
as  well  as  my  own."  So  he  kept  on  until  he  was  do- 
ing several  boys'  work.  Then  they  gave  him  a  man's 
job.  He  behaved  with  that  as  he  had  behaved  with 
the  other,  and  when  he  had  done  for  some  time  the 
work  of  a  number  of  men,  he  went  up  into  the  firm. 
The  boys  with  no  margin  of  faithfulness  stayed 
where  they  were.  I  know  one  business  office  where 
the  stenographers  are  graded  and  their  pay  deter- 
mined by  their  grade.  The  classification  states  that 
the  stenographers  shall  go  up  from  one  class  into 
the  higher  when  they  do  not  run  by  the  clock,  when 
they  begin  of  their  own  accord  before  nine  in  the 
morning  and  wait,  if  the  work  requires,  of  their  own 
accord  after  five  in  the  afternoon.  "There  are  sev- 
eral classes  of  young  men/'  said  Mr.  Carnegie  in  an 
address  before  a  graduating  class  in  New  York  City. 
"There  are  those  who  do  not  do  all  their  duty ;  there 
are  those  who  profess  to  do  their  duty,  and  there  is 
a  third  class  far  better  than  the  other  two,  that  do 
their  duty  and  a  little  more.  .  .  .  ]STo  one  can 
cheat  a  young  man  out  of  success  in  life.  You  young 
lads  have  begun  well.  Keep  on.  Do  n't  bother  about 
the  future.  Do  your  duty  and  a  little  more,  and  the 
future  will  take  care  of  itself."  God  will  care  for 
the  man  who  cares  enough  for  Him  to  seek  a  right- 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  137 

eousness   with    a   margin;    not   a    righteousness    of 
Scribe,  Pharisee,  or  Sadducee,  ancient  or  modern. 

Consider  in  the  third  place  this  principle  of  mar- 
gin in  questions  of  moral  habit  and  social  practice. 
I  mean  such  things  as  social  deception,  as  the  ob- 
servance or  lack  of  observance  of  the  Lord's-day,  the 
lighter  forms  of  drinking  and  the  petty  kinds  of 
gambling  that  are  held  to  be  innocent  of  harm. 
Those  of  you  who  are  clever  can  easily  make  addi- 
tions to  this  list.  I  could  do  so  myself,  but  I  am 
afraid  of  diverting  attention  from  the  principle. 
IXow  there  are  some  who  would  say  up  and  down 
that  these  things  are  wrong.  That  is  what  the  Puri- 
tan temper  would  say  about  them,  and  for  my  part 
I  believe  in  the  Puritan  temper.  But  I  waive  all 
that  now.  All  that  I  will  say  is  that  regarding  these 
things  all  Christians  admit  that  there  is  at  least  room 
for  difference  of  opinion,  and  that  it  may  be  open  to 
dispute  as  to  whether  Christians  should  do  them  or 
not.  I  ask  no  more  than  this  admission.  My  point 
is  that  what  is  open  to  dispute  is  not  open  to  indul- 
gence. If  the  thing  is  questionable,  it  is  unquestion- 
ably wrong  to  the  man  who  believes  in  being  right 
with  a  margin  to  spare.  For  Christians  are  not  peo- 
ple who  are  trying  to  see  how  close  to  the  debatable 
line  they  can  live  without  going  over  indisputably  to 
the  wrong  side.  They  are  children  of  the  day,  who 
live  in  the  open  sunlight,  and  who  are  happy  only 
when  they  have  a  comfortable  margin  between  them- 
selves and  all  that  is  open  to  doubt. 


138  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

And  men  perceive  the  value  of  a  margin  in  their 
personal  habits,  who  do  not  regard  the  matter  from 
the  point  of  view  of  Christian  freedom.  At  one  of 
the  annual  dinners  of  the  Periodical  Publishers'  As- 
sociation, I  sat  next  to  the  proprietor  of  one  of  our 
best  known  magazines.  On  the  other  side  of  him  sat 
a  Justice  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  and 
beyond  him  other  men  of  like  prominence  and  in- 
fluence with  these  two.  During  the  dinner,  I  noticed 
that  only  one  man  in  the  row  on  our  side  of  the  table 
was  drinking.  I  called  the  magazine  publisher's  at- 
tention to  the  fact  and  asked  him  if  he  did  not  think 
it  unusual.  "No,"  he  said,  "I  do  not  think  it  is. 
Our  life  is  at  too  high  a  tension  now.  When  every- 
thing may  hang  upon  a  sudden  decision  at  an  unex- 
pected moment,  a  man  can 't  afford  to  take  any 
chances."  He  needs  his  margin  of  safety. 

There  are  some  virtues  which  are  possible  only 
in  an  extreme  form,  a  form  which  puts  the  margin 
of  a  world  between  them  and  their  opposite  vices; 
the  chastity  of  men  and  women,  the  sanctity  of  the 
home,  the  honest  administration  of  public  and  private 
trust,  personal  probity  of  character.  These  are  them- 
selves only  when  carried  to  excess  and  protected  by 
an  immeasurable  margin  from  evil  and  lapse. 

And  fourthly,  to  pick  out  but  one  more  form  of 
illustration,  consider  the  principle  of  the  margin 
in  the  matter  of  character.  There  are  men  and 
women  who  carry  a  character  reserve,  and  there  are 
men  and  women  who  carry  none.  Visiting  one  of 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  139 

our  great  New  England  preparatory  schools  not  long 
ago,  I  walked  out  with  the  head  of  the  school,  after 
the  morning  service  in  the  school  chapel,  into  the 
beautiful  surrounding  country.  As  we  walked  along 
he  was  describing  in  answer  to  questions,  the  head  of 
another  school.  "Yes,"  he  said,  "he  is  a  strong  and 
useful  man,  but  he  has  no  adequate  reserves.  When 
he  has  spoken  or  done  his  wrork,  you  feel  that  he  is 
all  paid  out  and  has  no  hidden  power  still  to  draw 

upon.  There  is  Mr. ,  however,"  he  went  on, 

"who  does  his  work  with  the  same  impact  and  power, 
but  even  after  he  has  fired  his  last  shot  you  know  that 
he  has  another  shot  in  his  locker  still.  He  carries 
immense  reserves."  This  is  the  explanation  of  the 
difference  we  often  feel  but  can  not  describe  between 
men.  It  is  also  the  secret  of  power.  Power  is  in 
proportion  to  the  width  of  the  margin  between  a 
man's  character  reserve  and  the  exactions  of  his  task. 

This  will  suffice  in  the  way  of  illustration,  to 
make  clear  our  Lord's  principle  of  the  necessity  of 
the  margin  in  Christian  character.  His  view  was 
that  a  man  is  a  man  when  he  is  a  man  plus,  that  a 
life  is  a  life  when  there  is  something  to  spare,  that 
duty  is  done  only  when  it  is  more  than  done.  It  is 
essential  to  Christian  manhood,  in  other  words,  that 
there  should  be  a  safe,  wide  margin  between  us  and 
the  moral  boundaries. 

The  reasons  for  believing  that  this  principle  is 
essential  are  solid  and  convincing. 

In  the  first  place,  a  man  can  not  afford  to  be 


140  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

doubted.  He  can  afford  to  be  opposed  and  disliked 
and  defeated,  but  he  can  not  afford  to  be  doubted. 
Any  man  naturally  likes  to  be  liked,  and  lie  is  glad  to 
have  other  men  share  his  convictions  with  him.  But 
he  can  forego  popularity  and  the  acceptance  of  his 
views.  He  can  not,  however,  bear  being  distrusted. 
For  men  to  reject  his  judgment  is  one  thing,  for  them 
to  deny  his  sincerity  and  good  faith  and  moral  can- 
dor is  another.  And  the  only  way  to  be  sure  of  such 
faith  in  one's  probity  and  genuineness  is  to  deserve 
it  by  an  indisputable  life,  a  life  so  far  from  the 
boundaries  that  no  one  will  ever  think  of  it  as  capa- 
ble of  transgressing  them.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
man  lives  so  near  the  boundaries  that  a  night  is  long 
enough  for  him  to  get  over  and  back  without  being 
seen,  there  will  come  times  when  men  will  suspect 
that  he  has  been  over  while  they  slept.  But  the  man 
whose  constant,  life  is  so  remote  from  the  line  that 
one  night's  journey  would  not  carry  him  across  is 
secure  from  suspicion.  Men  may  hate  him  but  they 
can  not  distrust  him.  And  men  are  not  likely  to  hate 
the  man  of  such  irreproachable  honor.  They  are  the 
more  likely,  trusting  his  unassailable  goodness,  to 
want  him  for  a  friend. 

A  generation  ago  the  ideal  college  man  in  this 
country  was  young  William  Earl  Dodge.  He  was 
the  third  to  bear  that  honored  name.  Earl  he  was 
called,  and  he  bore  in  his  character  the  nobility  of 
his  name.  He  was  a  great  athlete,  a  man  of  charm 
and  power.  His  wealth  gave  him  the  ability  to  help 
others,  and  he  used  it  in  the  highest  and  the  humblest 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  141 

Christian  spirit.  And  he  passed  away  just  on  the 
threshold  of  his  life  as  he  entered  business  in  New 
York  City.  When  the  news  of  his  death  reached 
Princeton,  where  he  had  been  graduated  in  18Y9, 
Dean  Murray  took  occasion  in  a  sermon  in  Marquand 
Chapel  to  point  out  how  he  at  least  had  always  lived 
with  his  margins  wide  and  had  held  men's  love  be- 
cause they  trusted  him.  "He  came  among  us,"  said 
the  preacher,  "bearing  an  honored  name.  He  has 
left  that  name  unsullied.  .  .  .  His  scorn  of 
what  was  low  and  bad,  which  like  a  shield  struck 
from  him  every  low  and  insidious  temptation,  lifted 
him  into  a  position  of  moral  supremacy.  And  yet 
his  whole  nature  was  so  thoroughly  full  of  kindli- 
ness, that  he  was  the  man  trusted  by  his  compeers, 
as  few  were  in  college,  with  the  general  confidence. 
.  .  .  His  Christian  character  hung  on  no  peril- 
ous edge  of  doubtful  practices.  He  confessed  his 
Savior  before  men.  So  throughout  his  college  career, 
he  walked  with  God  and  left  behind  him  when  he 
went  from  us,  the  blessed  memory  of  a  good  and 
Christian  name."  "His  Christian  conduct  hung  on 
no  perilous  edge  of  doubtful  practices."  Of  how 
many  students  could  that  be  said  ?  Are  there  no 
professed  Christian  men  and  women  among  them 
whose  conduct  has  hung  over  that  edge,  who  have 
even  deliberately  gone  clear  over  into  the  forbidden 
land  ?  What  wonder  that  the  world  sneers  at  our 
Christian  protestations  and  distrusts  our  Christian 
character  if  our  lives  lose  their  margin  of  security! 


142  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

In  the  second  place,  the  man  is  always  dependa- 
ble who  is  so  with  a  margin, — and  no  other  man. 
It  is  the  man  with  the  margin  of  whom  you  know 
where  he  is  and  how  much  of  him  is  there.  Over 
the  boundaries  the  mists  often  hang;  even  when  the 
line  is  defined  the  fogs  are  over  it  and  men  who  loiter 
too  near  it  are  lost  sight  of.  Human  nature  is  weak, 
too,  and  can  not  bear  too  much,  and  it  is  dangerous 
to  let  it  play  too  near  to  peril.  The  utterly  and  en- 
tirely dependable  life  will  stay  out  and  keep  itself 
clear.  And  the  stronger  and  truer  it  is  the  more 
careful  it  will  be  to  do  this.  Men  often  act  on  the 
contrary  principle.  They  argue  that  they  are  capable 
and  sagacious  and  can  endure  what  weaker  men  can- 
not. They  resent  the  idea  that  because  they  are 
strong  or  their  calling  is  worthy,  they  should  guard 
themselves  the  more  rigorously  and  deny  themselves 
what  weaker  men  allow.  Men  in  the  ministry,  for 
example,  often  complain  because  they  are  expected 
to  be  better  than  other  men.  Well,  they  ought  not  to 
be  better  than  other  men  ought  to  be,  .but  they  ought 
to  be  better  than  other  men  are.  And  the  better  they 
really  are,  not  as  ministers  but  as  men,  the  better 
any  men  really  are,  the  more  and  not  the  less  neces- 
sary it  is  that  they  should  widen  their  margins.  "In 
proportion  to  excellence,"  said  Thring,  "compromise 
is  impossible.  A  single  leak  sinks  a  great  ship.'  A 
raft  that  is  all  leaks,  floats."  A  bad  man  can  still 
get  along  in  his  class  with  a  margin  so  narrow  that 
it  would  be  fatal  to  the  good  man  in  his  class.  One 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  143 

of  the  notorious  characters  in  New  York  for  some 
years  has  been  a  lawyer  named  H .  Brib- 
ery and  perjury  were  ordinary  tools  with  him  in  the 
operation  of  his  trade  of  blinding  justice  and  pro- 
tecting crime  and  vice.  Now  suppose  H 

should  tell  another  lie.  What  effect  would  it  have  ? 
None  at  all.  It  would  not  affect  his  character.  It 
could  not  mar  his  reputation.  What  is  another  hole 
in  a  derelict  ?  But  suppose  Mr.  Cleveland  should  tell 
a  lie.  Now  a  lie  is  a  lie.  Its  moral  quality  of  bad- 
ness is  the  same,  no  matter  who  tells  it.  But  if  Mr. 
Cleveland  should  be  found  to  be  a  liar,  what  a  collapse 
of  confidence  in  men,  of  respect  for  good  reputation 
there  would  be?  Why?  Because  men  expect  a 
wider  margin  of  the  good  man.  He  must  stay  fur- 
ther away  from  evil.  Compromise  is  bad  for  any 
man;  the  better  the  man,  the  worse  it  is.  To  the 
Christian  character  it  is  intolerable.  "Give  me  air 
and  room,"  pleads  the  Christian  spirit,  "keep  me  off 
by  a  margin  of  peace  from  the  bad  lands  and  the 
lands  that  abut  on  them." 

In  the  third  place  the  moral  margin  is  necessary 
as  a  preparation  for  emergency.  The  emergencies  are 
inevitable.  Students  and  young  men  often  think  that 
they  are  fighting  the  real  battle  of  life  and  that  this 
once  over  the  later  years  will  be  tranquil  and  free. 
The  younger  years  are  the  determinative  years,  when 
habit  is  fixd  and  principle  established,  but  every 
year  will  bring  its  own  necessities,  and  as  the  years 
pass  new  emergencies  come  upon  us.  Woe  to  the 


H4  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

men  and  women  who  have  made  no  preparation  for 
them,  the  foolish  virgins  who  have  taken  no  oil  and 
who,  with  unlit  lamp  and  ungirt  loin,  await  the  new 
trial  with  no  reserves.  Everywhere  except  in  the 
moral  life  men  are  wiser  than  this.  The  banks  carry 
their  surplus  and  reserve  accounts.  The  business 
man  watches  with  untiring  prevision  to  be  ready  for 
the  storm.  The  nation  makes  ready  in  p^ace  for 
the  time  of  war.  Men  made  no  end  of  fun  of  Mr. 
Koosevelt  because  when  Assistant  Secretary  of  the 
Eavy  before  the  war  with  Spain,  he  kept  the  type- 
writers forever  pounding  in  his  office.  But  he  was 
simply  doing  his  part  to  widen  the  margin  of  our  na- 
tional preparation  for  that  impending  conflict.  When 
the  Spanish  ships  were  examined  after  the  battle 
of  Santiago,  it  was  discovered  that  the  Spaniards  had 
made  no  adequate  preparation  at  all.  The  ships  were 
full  of  inflammable  material,  and  the  water  pipes  for 
extinguishing  fires  had  so  rusted  in  their  connections 
as  to  be  useless.  On  the  American  ships  before  ever 
war  had  begun,  the  carpenters  cut  out  every  inch  of 
wood  work  and  all  that  could  burn.  All  water  pipes 
were  in  perfect  order.  We  were  ready  and  the  war 
was  settled  before  ever  a  gun  had  been  fired,  because 
our  margin  of  preparation  for  emergencies  was  wider 
than  Spain's. 

In  mechanics  we  are  familiar  with  this  principle 
of  a  margin  of  safety  to  provide  against  emergencies, 
and  we  take  the  greatest  pains  to  have  the  mar- 
gin as  sure  and  wide  as  possible.  At  Columbia  Uni- 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  145 

versity  there  is  an  interesting  little  building  whose 
sole  purpose  is  to  test  that  margin  in  the  case  of  al- 
leged fire-proof  flooring  materials.  The  floor  to  be 
tested  is  built  into  this  building  as  a  roof.  "Under 
it  is  built  a  fierce  fire,  averaging  1700°  Fahrenheit, 
sometimes  reaching  2000°.  This  is  kept  up  for  four 
hours,  while  delicate  instruments  measure  the  heat 
of  the  floor  and  its  sagging  under  a  load  of  pig  iron, 
150  pounds  to  the  square  foot.  Then  water  is  turned 
on  the  whole,  and  after  the  floor  has  cooled,  a  weight 
of  600  pounds  to  the  square  foot  is  placed  upon  it. 
If  it  stands  this  tremendous  test,  the  floor  system  is 
approved.  Several  have  already  stood  it.  Now  no 
floor,  in  actual  use,  would  meet  such  enormous  heat, 
so  long  continued,  or  be  placed  under  such  terrific 
strain.  Why  is  the  test  made  so  severe?  Because 
when  human  life  is  at  stake,  no  'margin  of  safety' 
is  too  great."  Suppose  it  should  be  discovered 
that  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  will  bear  only  one 
pound  weight  more  than  is  to  be  put  upon  it  to-day. 
The  bridge  is  perfectly  safe,  but  the  instant  this  dis- 
covery was  made  the  bridge  would  be  shut  up  at  each 
end.  All  traffic  would  be  instantly  stopped.  Why? 
The  bridge  is  safe.  Yes,  but  the  margin  is  too  nar- 
row1. There  is  no  preparation  for  emergency,  for 
unforeseeable  strain.  This  is  the  way  men  act  for  the 
protection  of  human  bodies.  Shall  they  be  less  care- 
ful, more  reckless,  blind  to  essential  principles  of 
life,  in  their  care  for  human  souls  ?  Does  not  the  soul 
need  its  margin  of  safety  as  well  as  the  body  ? 
10 


146  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

A  man  who  has  worked  and  lived  for  many  years 
down  town  in  New  York  City  told  me  that  one  night 
about  one  o'clock  he  was  coming  home  along  the  de- 
serted streets  when  he  met  a  police  officer  of  his  ac- 
quaintance. They  walked  along  together  and  my 
friend  unthinkingly  walked  in  close  to  the  stoops  of 
the  houses  and  the  dark  area-ways  beneath  them.  As 
soon  as  he  noticed  it,  the  police  officer  turned  to  him 

and  said,  "You  ought  not  to  do  that,  Mr.  H ; 

you  ought  to  know  better  than  to  walk  in  there  at 
night.  Come  out  and  walk  along  the  curb  with  me. 
Do  n't  you  know  that  it  is  just  in  those  dark  area- 
ways  that  men  lurk  to  jump  out  on  you  ?  Walk  here 
along  the  curb  and  keep  a  space  between  you  and 
those  places.  There  are  two  advantages  in  this.  In 
the  first  place  you  have  time  to  get  ready  for  your  as- 
sailant, and  in  the  second  place  you  have  a  chance 
to  sound  an  alarm."  And  yet  there  are  men  who  will 
deliberately  walk  along  the  moral  cellar-ways  of  life, 
and  women  who  will  maintain  acquaintances  and  as- 
sociations which  leave  them  no  margin  of  safety  for 
preparation  or  alarm.  I  urge,  therefore,  in  behalf 
of  our  soul's  highest  safety  and  for  its  foreguarding 
for  the  time  of  peril,  the  principle  of  the  liberal  dis- 
tance from  the  line. 

And  fourthly,  the  moral  margin  is  necessary  if 
we  would  be  free  to  live  a  real  life  at  all.  We  are 
delivered  by  it  from  a  host  of  entanglements  and  en- 
cumbrances. In  the  matter  of  amusements  there  are 
people  with  no  margin,  who  are  so  overlaid  and  bound 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  147 

down  that  they  have  neither  wit  nor  strength  left  for 
real  living.  There  are  many  issues  and  problems 
which  throng  the  border  lines  of  life.  Whoever  lives 
on  the  border  lines  will  be  beset  by  these  issues  and 
problems,  and  a  good  part  of  his  life  will  be  made  up 
of  his  dealings  with  them.  Take  it  in  the  matter  of 
drinking,  for  example.  How  many  drinks  he  can 
allow  himself  is  no  problem  to  the  man  who  takes 
none.  To  the  moderate  drinker  it  may  become  the 
one  mind-consuming  question.  At  a  dinner  not  long 
ago,  I  saw  a  capable  young  lawyer  employed  in  just 
this  way.  He  was  a  moderate  drinker  and  as  many 
moderate  drinkers  do,  he  had  drunk  immoderately. 
Each  time  the  waiter  came  behind  him  to  fill  his 
glasses,  he  argued  the  question  with  himself,  could 
he  take  any  more  ?  It  would  have  been  ludicrous  if 
it  had  not  been  so  pathetic.  About  him  men  were 
talking  together  rationally  of  questions  of  reality. 
All  his  strength  was  consumed  by  the  problem  of  the 
border.  Was  he  too  far  over  or  not  ?  The  sane  man 
will  rid  himself  of  all  such  issues  at  once  by  living 
wholly  aloof  from  the  lines  where  they  arise.  Men 
need  all  their  mind  and  strength  for  loving  God  and 
doing  man's  work  in  the  world.  They  can  not  afford 
to  waste  it  in  the  needless  and  pitiful  debates  of  the 
midlands. 

When  I  was  a  boy  I  lived  in  the  mountains  of 
Central  Pennsylvania,  and  one  of  the  most  exciting 
sports  was  deer  hunting.  It  was  illegal  and  unsports- 
manlike to  run  deer  with  dogs,  so  we  drove  them 


148  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

ourselves.  After  we  had  put  the  men  on  the  run- 
ways the  rest  of  us  would  portion  out  the  country  to 
be  driven  over.  One  man  would  be  given  the  valley 
and  others  the  hillsides  on  either  side.  The  valley 
meant  creeping  along  through  the  rhododendron 
thickets,  in  the  fog  of  the  early  morning.  Each 
wanted  the  hillside,  and  the  higher  up  the  better, 
where  the  forest  thinned  out  and  there  were  outlooks 
across  the  mountains  and  an  uplook  into  the  great 
blue  skies  of  God.  Life's  roads  which  we  tread 
should  all  be  above  the  thicket  and  the  fog,  free  from 
the  snarl  and  hindrance  of  the  low  valley  and  unim- 
peded and  clear,  that  we  may  live  freely,  which  alone 
is  life.  We  have  no  time  to  waste  on  the  needless 
tangle  of  moral  perplexities  which  we  can  escape  in 
an  instant  by  the  simple  elevation  of  the  plane  of 
life,  by  the  thrust  of  a  margin  between  the  snares  and 
the  soul. 

Yet  some  men  deliberately  choose  to  live  down 
among  the  unnecessary  debates.  In  them,  of  course, 
the  debate  soon  dies  away,  and  they  grow  accustomed 
to  living  with  stupefied  conscience  in  land  debatable, 
or  even  undebatably  wrong.  The  free  men  freely 
make  themselves  slaves.  But  for  security  and  peace, 
for  the  freedom  that  is  real  and  the  quiet  not  bought 
with  a  blinded  moral  vision  or  a  chloroformed  spirit- 
ual sense,  men  need  the  margin.  With  the  margin 
intervening,  life  is  at  leisure  to  be  lived  in  its  true 
fullness.  Mr.  Moody  used  to  tell,  in  one  of  his 
homely,  but  effective,  illustrations,  of  an  apple  tree 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  149 

which  grew  on  the  edge  of  a  Northfield  orchard,  with 
a  branch  hanging  over  the  line  across  the  road. 
Every  man  and  boy  who  went  by  took  a  shy  at  that 
tree.  It  had  more  sticks  and  stones  flung  at  it  than 
all  the  other  trees  of  the  orchard  combined.  And  it 
is  ever  so  with  all  border  line  straddlers.  Those  poor 
people  in  the  disputed  boundary  between  Persia  and 
Turkey  or  between  Persia  and  Afghanistan,  are  sub- 
ject to  the  exactions  of  both  sovereignties  and  the  im- 
munities of  neither.  Will  a  Christian  man  choose  to 
subject  his  life  to  the  absurdities  and  immoralities  of 
such  a  principle  ?  The  only  other  is  the  principle  of 
the  margin. 

And  now,  in  conclusion,  how  are  we  to  embody 
this  principle  in  our  lives?  Many  of  you  have  al- 
ready been  answering  that  question.  One  does  not 
need  to  look  far  to  see  how  to  apply  the  law  of  the 
margin  to  character  and  conduct.  It  applies  itself, 
if  we  will  give  it  a  chance  and  will  not  resist  that 
good  government  of  God  which  does  not  locate  men 
on  the  boundaries. 

In  the  first  place,  we  can  do  more  than  our  duty. 
In  one  sense,  of  course,  we  can  not.  It  is  each  man's 
duty  to  do  all  that  he  can  do.  No  man  can  do  more. 
But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  duty  is  usually  a  matter  of 
options.  A  good  many  different  things  seem  opened 
to  a  man's  free  choice,  and  he  takes  and  does  what 
he  will,  and  they  all  seem  about  equally  promising 
and  fruitful.  Now  in  all  such  choices  a  man  can 
take  the  easy  or  he  can  take  the  great  and  hard. 


150  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

Under  the  principle  of  the  margin,  a  man  will  not 
evade  any  duty  because  it  seems  great  and  hard.  In 
the  matter  of  the  missionary  duty,  for  example,  some 
men  seek  for  excuses,  and  give  themselves  reasons  for 
believing  that  they  are  exempt,  and  are  relieved  if 
they  succeed  in  escaping  with  an  untroubled  con- 
science. Other  men  press  in,  attempt  to  brush  away 
the  obstacles  and  are  disappointed  if  they  are  turned 
aside  to  some  less  exacting  and  sacrificial  service. 
This  is  the  Christian  spirit.  Christian  men  and 
women  do  not  try  to  see  how  wide  a  margin  they  can 
insert  between  themselves  and  sacrifice,  but  how 
widely  they  can  protect  themselves  from  the  possi- 
bility of  self-indulgence.  They  covet  earnestly  the 
privilege  of  heroic  duty. 

As  Christian  men  and  women  how  are  we  doing 
our  daily  work  ?  Are  we  doing  it  as  Christ  did  His, 
pressed  down,  good  measure,  running  over,  with  a 
margin,  or  skimped  and  niggardly,  hugging  the  edge 
of  the  task  ?  It  is  an  essential  of  Christian  character 
that  its  product  should  surpass  the  product  of  any 
other  type  of  character.  It  should  beat  all  other 
character  by  a  margin,  and  in  nothing  more  than  in 
the  square  and  surplus  fulfilling  of  the  homespun 
duties  of  daily  toil. 

It  is  this  surplus,  this  margin,  which  in  social 
relationship  constitutes  grace  and  refinement  Cour- 
tesy is  just  the  width  of  the  margin  between  the  edge 
of  mere  decency  and  our  social  ways.  The  larger 
the  surplus  of  love  over  simple  decent  manners,  the 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  151 

finer  the  grace.  And  it  is  this  surplus  of  duty-doing 
over  common  performance  that  constitutes  true  power 
and  influence. 

We  can  have  no  difficulty  in  seeing  the  applica- 
tion of  the  principle  in  our  work,  and  it  is  equally 
clear  in  our  personal  moral  problems.  We  are  to 
keep  clear  of  all  that  is  questionable.  We  are  to  do 
better  than  men  require  of  us.  "So  society  demands 
so  much  of  you,  does  it  ?"  says  Jesus.  "Well,  double 
its  demands.  Exact  twice  as  much  of  yourself."  Men 
are  not  meant  to  be  satisfied  with  the  demands  of  the 
standards  of  their  environment,  their  Church,  their 
age.  All  the  progress  of  the  world  has  been  due  to 
men  who  were  discontented,  who  required  more  of 
themselves  than  the  world  asked.  The  great  men  are 
the  men  who  insist  on  putting  a  margin  between 
themselves  and  their  age  with  its  limitations,  who 
will  not  contract  themselves  into  the  pettiness  of 
their  time.  Our  Lord  broke  through  the  bonds  of 
His  day,  of  all  days,  of  death  itself.  He  was  Hia 
own  law.  And  He  calls  us  to  follow  Him.  "Come 
out  from  the  crowd,"  is  His  call.  "Be  a  moral  aristo- 
crat. Join  my  nobility  of  the  men  with  the  margin 
beyond  the  need."  Constantly  you  hear  people  ask- 
ing, "What  does  common  opinion  think  or  approve  ?" 
Ixegarding  this  or  that  practice  they  inquire,  "Is 
this  practice  sanctioned  by  Christian  people  ?"  What 
under  the  sun  does  it  matter  what  people  think  or 
sanction?  Well,  it  matters  something.  We  ought 
to  scorn  to  demand  less  of  ourselves  than  the  crowd 


152  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

expects  of  us.  But  we  ought  also  to  scorn  to  demand 
as  little.  We  were  meant  to  transcend  the  crowds,  to 
live  by  our  own  high  laws,  at  a  loftier  altitude  than 
the  conventions  of  the  small.  The  open  life,  the  high 
life,  the  free  life,  the  life  with  its  broad  margins  of 
deliverance  is  the  only  life  for  us,  the  life  where 

"  My  heart  is  at  ease  from  men    .    .    . 
And  belief  overmasters  doubt  and  I  know  that  I  know, 
And  my  spirit  is  grown  to  a  lordly  great  compass  within. " 

This  is  the  life  we  need  to-day  in  our  colleges. 
A  little  before  a  recent  visit  to  one  of  our  great  uni- 
versities, an  influential  student  of  the  university  was 
in  my  office  and  I  asked  him  what  needed  to  be  said. 

"Well,"  he  replied,  "I  think  the  great  need  at 

is  for  men  to  quit  straddling,  to  get  down  off  the 
fence,  to  come  out  into  the  clear."  And  the  universal 
need  is  for  men  of  robust  personal  independence,  of 
fearless  moral  conviction,  of  contempt  for  the  sheep 
slavery  of  the  crowd,  for  men  of  integrity,  purity, 
and  strength, — with  a  margin. 

You  will  find  the  ideal  in  Colonel  Henderson's 
Life  of  Stonewall  Jackson.  It  is  in  the  account 
of  his  cadet  days  at  West  Point  "Jackson  paid  no 
heed,"  says  his  biographer,  "to  the  traditionary  code 
of  etiquette.  His  acquaintances  were  chosen  regard- 
less of  standing,  as  often  from  the  class  below  him  as 
from  his  own.  And  in  yet  another  way,  his  strength 
of  character  was  displayed.  Towards  those  who 
were  guilty  of  dishonorable  conduct,  he  was  merciless 


Freedom:  Necessity  of  a  Margin  153 

almost  to  vindictiveness.  He  had  his  own  code  of 
right  and  wrong,  and  from  one  who  infringed  it  he 
would  accept  neither  apology  nor  excuse."  Perhaps 
you  think  this  is  a  little  fierce.  I  think  it  is,  but 
one  great  need  of  our  Christian  life  is  for  more  of 
this  stern  and  severe  and  Christlike  fierceness.  But 
we  can  not  call  vindictiveness  ideal  and  probably 
Stonewall  Jackson,  severe  though  he  was,  was  never 
really  vindictive.  But  if  we  want  the  strength  with- 
out the  fierceness,  we  can  find  it  in  the  noble  lines  of 
Mrs.  Kingsley's  dedication  of  her  exquisite  biography 
of  her  husband. 

"To  the  beloved  memory  of  a  Righteous  Man 
Who  loved  God  and  truth  above  all  things. 
A  man  of  untarnished  honor — 
Loyal  and  chivalrous — gentle  and  strong — 
Modest  and  humble — tender  and  true — 
Pitiful  to  the  weak — yearning  after  the  erring — 
Stern  to  all  forms  of  wrong  and  oppression, 
Yet  most  stern  to  himself — 
Who  being  angry,  yet  sinned  not    .     .     . 
Who  lived  in  the  presence  of  God  here, 
And  passing  through  the  grave  and  gate  of  death 
Now  liveth  unto  God  for  evermore." 

Who  follows  in  his  train? 


PROGRESS  AND  PATIENCE 

THE  VALUE  OF  A  SENSE  OF  FAILURE 


I  do  what  many  dream  of  all  their  lives, 

— Dream?  strive  to  do,  and  agonize  to  do, 

And  fail  in  doing.     I  could  count  twenty  such 

On  twice  your  fingers,  and  not  leave  this  town, 

Who  strive — you  don't  know  how  the  others  strive 

To  paint  a  little  thing  like  that  you  smeared 

Carelessly  passing  with  your  robes  afloat, — 

Yet  do  much  less,  so  much  less,  Someone  says, 

(I  know  his  name,  no  matter) — so  much  less ! 

Well,  less  is  more,  Lucrezia:  I  am  judged. 

There  burns  a  truer  light  of  God  in  them, 

In  their  vexed  beating  stuffed  and  stopped-up  brain, 

Heart,  or  whate'er  else,  than  goes  on  to  prompt 

This  low-pulsed  forthright  craftsman's  hand  of  mine- 

Their  works  drop  groundward,  but  themselves,  I  know> 

Eeach  many  a  time  a  heaven  that's  shut  to  me, 

Enter  and  take  their  place  there  sure  enough, 

Though  they  come  back  and  can  not  tell  the  world. 

My  works  are  nearer  heaven,  but  I  sit  here. 

The  sudden  blood  of  these  men !  at  a  word — 

Praise  them,  it  boils,  or  blame  them,  it  boils  too. 

I,  painting  from  myself  and  to  myself, 

Know  what  I  do,  am  unmoved  by,  men's  blame 

Or  their  praise  either.     Somebody  remarks 

Morello's  outline  there  is  wrongly  traced, 

His  hue  mistaken  :  what  of  that  ?  or  else, 

Rightly  traced  and  well  ordered  ;  what  of  that  ? 

Speak  as  they  please,  what  does  the  mountain  care? 

Ah,  but  a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp, 

Or  what's  a  heaven  for  ? 

— BROWNING,  "  Andrea  Del  Sarto." 


PROGRESS  AND  PATIENCE 

CHRISTIAN  character  is  a  living  thing.  Every- 
thing that  is  Christian  is  alive.  And  the  indispensa- 
ble sign  of  life  is  growth.  Among  the  essentials  of 
Christian  character,  accordingly,  we  must  place  the 
principle  of  change,  of  progress  into  ever  larger  life. 
We  ought  repeatedly  to  confront  ourselves  with  the 
inquiry,  Am  I  a  better  and  stronger  man  than  I  was  ? 

Is  this  a  living  question  with  us?  There  are 
some  whose  consciences  are  not  in  the  least  exercised 
over  it.  They  are  satisfied  with  what  they  are,  and 
see  no  reason  why  they  should  be  distressed  because 
they  are  not  better,  or  be  anxious  to  find  out  how 
they  may  become  better.  Or  they  are  satisfied  with 
wishes  to  be  better,  without  any  real  progress  each 
year  in  actual  improvement  of  character.  The  first 
condition  of  progress  toward  the  highest  is  a  deep 
sense  of  the  duty  of  advancement.  We  must  be- 
lieve that  we  must  become  better.  That  is  what  the 
Christian  life  is,  a  life  of  steady  progress  and  growth. 
We  are  bidden  to  move  on  in  it  from  elementary 
things,  such  "first  principles,"  as  the  writer  of  the 
Letter  to  the  Hebrews  called  them,  as  repentance 


158  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

from  dead  works  and  faith  toward  God,  and  to  keep 
our  faces  set  toward  perfection.  Each  year,  accord- 
ingly, we  ought  to  be  asking  ourselves :  "Am  I  really 
better  than  I  was?  Have  I  more  self-control,  more 
patience  and  sympathy  ?  Do  I  think  more  often  and 
more  lovingly  of  God  ?  Am  I  more  kind  and  un- 
selfish and  helpful  and  tender?  Do  I  do  my  work 
with  more  ease  and  power?  Am  I  quicker  to  obey 
God  and  do  the  duty  He  assigns,  and  more  responsive 
and  tractable  to  His  Spirit  ?"  Are  we  making  prog- 
ress in  these  things  ?  The  first  condition  of  doing 
so  is  to  see  that  we  must.  The  Pharisee  was  the 
best  man  of  his  time  and  the  worst, — the  worst  be- 
cause he  was  satisfied  with  not  being  a  better  man. 
The  Publican  was  far  inferior  in  character  and  use- 
fulness, but  he  was  a  better  man  in  the  principle  of 
his  life,  because  he  was  discontented  with  himself  and 
longed  to  be  a  better  man.  And  the  two  contrary 
principles  are  as  common  in  the  Christian  Church 
and  out  of  the  Christian  Church  to-day  as  they  were 
in  and  out  of  the  Jewish  Church  in  the  time  of  our 
Lord. 

The  Christian  character  must  recognize  the  duty 
of  ceaseless  change.  It  must  see  that  the  best  is  an 
obligation,  that  the  perfection  which  no  man  has  is 
the  thing  which  the  man  must  have  or  die,  or  must 
have  by  dying.  The  ideal  of  perfection  must  claim 
him  irresistibly.  For  a  man  not  to  see  this  argues 
some  moral  defect  in  him.  Christian  character  is 
hunger  for  the  highest. 


Progress  and  Patience  159 

"Ah  my  God, 

What  might  I  not  have  made  of  Thy  fair  world, 
Had  I  but  loved  Thy  highest  creature  here? 
It  was  my  duty  to  have  loved  the  highest: 
It  surely  was  my  profit  had  I  known  : 
It  would  have  been  my  pleasure  had  I  seen. 
We  needs  must  love  the  highest  when  we  see  it, 
Not  Lancelot,  nor  another." 

If  we  reject  this  claim  of  the  highest  or  feel  it 
slightly,  we  shall  soon  let  go  the  higher,  then  the 
high.  For  nothing  carries  us  from  the  low  to  the 
high  but  requires  us  in  principle  to  go  on  from  the 
high  to  the  highest. 

All  strength  is  a  conquering.  It  is  an  active 
power,  not  a  passive  possession.  It  is  a  rejection  of 
the  lower,  a  resolution  of  ascent,  an  arising  to  the 
far  call  of  Christ.  All  great  biographies  are  the 
lives  of  the  seeking  men,  the  men  who  are  not  con- 
tent, "Make  Thou  my  spirit,"  is  their  prayer,  as 
it  was  Marshall  Jewell's,  "Make  Thou  my  spirit 
clear  and  pure  as  are  the  frosty  skies."  "If  I  cease 
becoming  better,"  wrote  Cromwell  in  his  Bible,  "I 
shall  soon  cease  to  be  good."  "Not  as  though  I  had 
already  attained,  either  were  already  perfect:"  says 
Paul,  "but  I  follow  after,  if  that  I  may  apprehend 
that  for  which  also  I  am  apprehended  of  Christ 
Jesus.  Brethren,  I  count  not  myself  to  have  appre- 
hended: But  this  one  thing  I  do,  forgetting  those 
things  which  are  behind,  and  reaching  forth  unto 
those  things  which  are  before^  I  press  toward  the 
mark  for  the  prize  of  the  high  calling  of  God  in 


160  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

Christ  Jesus.  Let  us  therefore,  as  many  as  be  per- 
fect, be  thus  minded :  and  if  in  any  thing  ye  be  other- 
wise minded,  God  shall  reveal  even  this  unto  you." 
The  very  passage  of  time  shows  us  the  necessity  of 
change,  the  transitoriness  of  things.  If  we  do  not 
move,  God  grips  us  in  the  sweep  of  his  days  and 
moves  us.  We  are  living  souls,  never  twice  the  same, 
incapable  of  permanence.  Our  only  choice  is  not  as 
to  whether  we  will  change,  but  in  what  direction,  into 
whose  likeness.  The  soul's  whole  life  is  in  progress, 
in  the  eternal  search,  the  quest  of  the  Grail. 

"  Glory  of  warrior,  glory  of  orator,  glory  of  song, 

Paid  with  a  voice  flying  by  to  be  lost  in  an  endless  sea — 
Glory  of  virtue  to  fight,  to  struggle,  to  right  the  wrong, — 
Nay  but  she  aimed  not  at  glory,  no  lover  of  glory  she: 
Give  her  the  glory  of  going  on  and  still  to  be. 

"  The  wages  of  sin  is  death ;  if  the  wages  of  virtue  be  dust 
Would  she  have  heart  to  endure  for  the  life  of  the 

worm  and  the  fly? 

She  desires  no  isles  of  the  blest,  no  quiet  seats  of  the  just, 
To  rest  in  a  golden  grove  or  to  bask  in  a  summer  sky ; 
Give  her  the  wages  of  going  on  and  not  to  die." 

This  "going  on"  is  the  life  of  the  soul.  It  is  the 
essential  thing  in  Christian  character,  which  is  not  a 
possession  of  finished  qualities,  but  a  stern  self-gov- 
ernment under  the  will  of  God  to  the  end  of  the 
widest  service  and  an  unending  attainment. 

We  must  believe  that  we  ought  to  set  out  on  this 
great  journey,  and  we  must  believe  also  that  we  are 
able  for  it  Unless  we  can,  and  unless  we  believe 
that  we  can,  how  unworthy  and  unfaithful  we  are! 


Progress  and  Patience  161 

Samuel  Daniel  put  this  emphatically  in  his  Epistle 
to  the  Countess  of  Cumberland,  in  lines  twice  quoted 
in  Coleridge's  Aids  to  Reflection: 

"  Unless  above  himself  he  can 
Erect  himself,  how  poor  a  thing  is  man  I" 

What  we  ought  we  are  able  for.  If  the  task  is 
infinite  and  endless,  we  shall  be  given  infinite  and 
endless  strength  for  it.  I  knew  a  three-year-old  girl 
who  undertook  to  move  a  table  which  taxed  all  her 
strength.  After  a  long  struggle,  her  mother  said  to 
her  discouragingly,  "Baby,  you  can't  move  that  table. 
It 's  as  big  as  you  are."  "Yes,  I  can,"  was  the  un- 
discouraged  reply  of  the  little  girl,  "I  'm  as  big  aa 
it  is."  Some  men  think  their  tasks  are  as  big  as  they 
are.  Other  men  realize  that  they  are  as  big  as  their 
tasks.  We  can  as  Christian  men.  Nothing  is  set  for 
jus  that  we  can  not  do  by  the  grace  of  God.  Even 
when  we  have  no  past  successes  to  rely  upon,  when 
our  ground  of  complaint  is  that  we  have  so  often 
failed  and  dropped  back,  that  we  may  not  hope  to 
succeed  and  advance,  we  still  can  and  must  believe 
that  we  can.  There  are  many  reasons  why  we  should 
still  cherish  such  a  great  hope,  but  the  one  sufficient 
reason  is  that  we  are  not  making  ourselves  better. 
If  we  grow  better  it  is  simply  because  we  have  yielded  ! 
ourselves  to  the  grace  and  goodness  of  God.  There 
is  a  new  life  within  us,  and  that  new  life  can  and 
will  work  out  the  glorious  end  which  God  purposes 
for  us.  On  an  athletic  team  in  one  of  our  great 
ii 


1 62  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

universities,  some  years  ago,  was  a  student  whom  all 
his  fellows  loved,  and  whose  character,  steadily  de* 
veloping  in  power  and  beauty,  found  its  secret  in  his 
favorite  Bible  verse,  which  he  read  personally,  "Be- 
ing confident  of  this  very  thing,  that  he  who  began 
a  good  work  in  me  will  perfect  it  until  the  day  of 
Jesus  Christ."  That  is  the  one  sure  reason  we  have 
for  our  hope  of  becoming  truly  better.  And  it  is  a 
help  on  the  way,  to  accept  by  faith  the  fact  of  the 
new  life  within. 

This,  then,  in  the  third  place,  is  a  real  and  prac- 
tical help.  We  shall  not  go  on  our  way  toward  the 
highest  unless  we  trust  the  indwelling  Spirit  of  God 
to  do  His  part,  that  part  of  which  Paul  was  speak- 
ing when  he  said:  "It  is  no  longer  I  that  live,  but 
Christ  liveth  in  me :  and  that  life  which  I  now  live  in 
the  flesh  I  live  in  faith,  the  faith  which  is  in  the  Son 
of  God."  On  the  one  side  it  looks  natural  enough. 
It  is  just  as  when  we  eat  and  breathe  and  exercise 
in  the  physical  life.  These  processes  are  so  natural 
that  they  conceal  from  us  the  miracle  of  life  which 
depends  upon  them  for  its  sustenance.  And  so  in  our 
higher  life  we  fulfill  as  we  may  the  conditions  set 
before  us,  and  it  seems  quite  simple ;  but  in  reality, 
back  of  all  that  we  do,  God  is  doing  the  real  work, 
ever  moving  supernaturally  upon  us  and  fashioning 
us  into  the  likeness  He  hopes  some  day  to  see  in  us. 
God  wants  us  to  reach  the  highest,  and  is  doing  His 
best  in  us  and  with  us  to  this  end. 

The  fourth  essential,  then,  is  that  we  co-operate 


Progress  and  Patience  163 

with.  God  in  this,  and  throw  our  wills  toward  God 
and  all  pure  and  upper  things.  Perhaps  our  Christ 
tian  life  began  with  a  great  surrender ;  but  whether  it 
did  or  not,  it  is  to  consist  of  an  experience  of  con- 
stant surrender  to  the  highest.  In  our  reading  we 
ought  to  cut  out  of  our  lives  all  that  hinders  or  holds 
us  down,  and  read  only  what  helps  and  uplifts.  In 
our  thinking  we  ought  to  bar  out,  if  we  can,  or  drive 
out  if  we  can  not  bar  out,  all  unworthy  and  lower 
thoughts,  and  think  only  on  whatsoever  things  are 
true,  honorable,  just,  pure,  lovely,  and  of  good  re- 
port. In  our  conversation  we  ought  to  avoid  what 
is  silly  and  degrading,  and  speak  of  the  truth_  which 
exalts  and  inspires.  There  are  habits  in  the  higher 
life  as  well  as  in  the  lower,  and  we  grow  best  toward 
God  when  our  souls  have  contracted  the  habits  which 
promote  growth  of  spiritual  character.  We  shall 
make  no  headway  toward  the  highest  without  Bible 
study  and  prayer. 

And  fifth,  we  must  be  obedient  to  our  heavenly 
vision  and  to  all  simple  duty.  What  light  we  see, 
we  must  follow.  We  must  not  be  afraid  to  make 
changes  in  our  lives.  To-day  is  the  time  to  do  it. 
When  we  realize  that  a  change  should  be  made,  we 
should  make  it  without  delay.  Cutting  out  some- 
thing that  is  wrong  is  a  good  beginning.  Let  us  scru- 
tinize our  lives  now.  Perhaps  we  have  some  habit 
that  should  be  exterminated.  Begin  with  it  at  once. 
The  first  chance  we  have  to  do  some  hard  thing  we 
ought  to  seize.  We  rise  step  by  step.  And  the  per- 


1 64  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

ception  of  an  evil  to  be  rooted  out  of  our  lives  or  a 
new  and  hard  duty  to  be  done,  is  a  revelation  of  a 
new  step  awaiting  us,  to  be  taken  fearlessly,  as  one 
step  onward  and  upward  to  our  goal. 

Sixth,  we  must  be  watchful,  to  see  what  it  is  that 
we  are  doing,  and  what  it  is  that  is  waiting  to  be 
done.  Much  bad  behavior  is  due  to  indifference,  to 
a  want  of  attention.  The  evil  things  get  done  be- 
cause they  manage  to  elude  notice.  We  ought  not  to 
take  the  morality  of  our  conduct  for  granted.  It 
ought  to  be  examined  and  mercilessly  judged  by  right 
standards.  To  this  end  we  ought  to  be  measuring 
ourselves  by  Christ,  and  asking  ourselves :  "Is  this 
course  of  conduct  which  I  have  followed  the  highest 
after  all  ?  Ought  I  not  to  be  less  contented  with  my- 
self ?  *Wherein,  judged  by  Christ,  ought  I  to  be  bet- 
ter than  I  am?"  In  the  matter  of  our  amusements 
are  we  sure  there  could  be  no  advancement  of  taste 
and  practice,  that  would  lift  them  nearer  to  the 
purity  of  Christ? 

Once  more,  we  ought  to  have  some  true  friends 
with  whom  we  can  talk  freely,  who  will  not  hesitate 
to  criticise  us,  showing  us  our  failings  and  mistakes. 
Even  if  we  have  no  such  human  friends,  we  have  our 
Lord,  to  whom  we  can  go  with  everything,  and  who 
will  faithfully  search  us  if  we  will  let  him,  and  ex- 
pose us  to  ourselves. 

EThe  exposure  of  a  man  to  himself  by  Jesus  Christ 
far  safer  than  the  man's  own  introspection.     The 
earnest  Christian  man  is  often  his  own  worst  tor-\ 


Progress  and  Patience  165 

turer.  I  can  not  illustrate  the  peril  of  such  torture 
as  contrasted  with  Christ's  exposure,  better  than  by 
quoting  a  letter  received  not  long  ago  from  a  student 
in  one  of  our  Eastern  universities.  "I  have  decided 
to  write  to  you  only  after  long  hesitation.  I  have 
felt  for  a  long  time  that  perhaps  you  could  solve  the 
intricate  problem  of  my  life  and  put  me  on  the  right 
track.  Perhaps  you  noticed  this  quotation  from  John 
Kelman  in  the  Northfield  calendar: 

'  Many  people  have  got  hold  of  arguments  that  seem 
to  them  entirely  sufficient,  and  yet  they  can  not  swing  them- 
selves clear  of  uncertainty,  and  come  into  a  faith  that  will 
satisfy  their  souls.  Many  seem  to  lack  power  to  believe,  as 
if  they  had  been  mesmerized  into  a  paralytic  way  of  think- 
ing, as  if  some  inertia  had  come  over  them,  an  evil  breath 
in  which  they  could  not  speak  their  hearts  out,  and  as  if 
they  were  living  in  bondage  to  a  great  fear.' 

It  states  my  position  better  than  I  could  ever 
do ;  but  right  there,  with  aggravating  incompleteness, 
the  quotation  ends.  We  are  not  told  where  the  fault, 
the  inconsistency  is,  and  I  want  to  ask  you,  if  you 
will,  to  point  some  sure  path  out  of  the  bewilderment 
in  which  those  people  Mr.  Kelman  writes  about  (of 
whom  I  fear  I  am  one)  are  lost.  A  man  who  is 
hypnotized  has  not  the  power  to  shake  off  the  hyp- 
nosis, nor  even  to  appeal  to  the  hypnotizer  for  re- 
lease. Where  does  the  salvation  of  the  morally  hyp- 
notized lie?  I  don't  want  vague  general  answers, 
but  definite,  practicable  counsel  from  your  own  ex- 
perience. I  come  of  a  good  old  orthodox  family  in 


1  66  The  Marks  of  a  Man 


England.  I  inherit  a  dislike  for  all  the  modern 
'stumbling  blocks/  dancing,  the  Sunday  newspaper, 
smoking,  etc.,  though  my  twentieth  century  reason 
tells  me  they  are  sane  and  legitimate  pleasures.  I 
go  to  Korthfield  summer  after  summer,  in  July  and 
August,  hear  all  the  speakers  and  believe  all  they  say, 
and  resolve  to  inculcate  their  ideals  in  my  daily  life. 
Then  I  descend  from  mountain  top  to  valley,  and 
while  the  mental  machinery  of  belief,  so  to  speak,  re- 
mains, the  engine  has  stopped  pumping,  the  heart  has 
gone  clean  out  of  it.  I  realize  then  that  where  I 
thought  I  at  last  had  'got  religion,'  I  was  only  in  a 
transitory  state  of  fervid  emotion,  that  stimulated  my 
imagination  while  it  never  touched  the  vague,  death- 
less germ  of  doubt  down  underneath  all,  —  the  doubt 
that  tells  me  I  may  awaken  to-morrow  and  find  that 
the  whole  business  of  religion  was  a  grand  world- 
fiction,  a  chimera  born  of  the  necessity  of  the  soul 
to  worship  and  revere.  Very  likely  you  are  smiling 
at  my  childishness.  Perhaps  you  think  I  am  writing 
for  effect,  or  am  rather  boastfully  seeking  to  show 
that  I,  like  many  great  men  of  the  past,  am  a  doubter. 
But  from  the  bottom  of  my  soul  I  despise  the  doubt- 
ing, questioning,  faithless  man.  I  have  a  wistful 
admiration  for  men  like  old  Sir  Thomas  Browne, 
who  longed  for  yet  greater  mystery  and  uncertainty 
in  the  universe,  that  he  might  transcend  it  gloriously 
with  his  unconquered  faith.  I  admire  the  same  qual- 
ity in  my  own  friends,  in  -  ,  whose  life  breathes 
the  very  spirit  and  purpose  of  the  Christ,  in  -  , 


Progress  and  Patience  167 

who  last  year  puzzled  with  me  over  many  of  these 
questions,  but  who  has  now  left  me  far,  far  behind. 
"But  it  seems  as  though  I  had  been  somehow  left 
out  of  it  all,  for  I  can  not  bring  Christ  into  my  own 
life,  much  as  I  feel  the  need  of  Him  there  at  every 
point  and  juncture.  You  will  probably  tell  me  to 
pray,  but  I  have  prayed  and  prayed  till  the  prayers 
died  on  my  lips  for  shame  of  my  hypocrisy.  Here  I 
was  alone  in  the  room,  a  loneliness  I  could  feel  and 
know,  talking  idiotically  off  into  space.  It  was,  as 
you  said  last  summer,  like  going  up  against  a  stone 
wall,  but  I  have  not  found  developing  in  me  that 
subtle,  super-sense  of  things  unseen,  that  you  said 
would  follow  upon  continued  prayer.  I  decided  long 
since  to  be  a  minister, — would  be  a  missionary  if  my 
heart  were  not  so  weak  I  could  never  pass  an  exam- 
ination,—*but  what  a  spectacle  of  a  hypocrite  I  will 
be,  preaching  from  the  pulpit  platitudes  and  general- 
ities and  Biblical  exegeses,  when  in  my  heart  of 
hearts  I  know  all  the  time  that  my  life  is  not  in- 
formed and  transformed  by  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  I 
see  how  that  wonderful  influence  has  worked  marvel- 
ously  down  the  ages  in  the  world's  history.  I  recog- 
nize its  power  in  lifting  the  moral  lepers  and  pariahs, 
the  MeAuleys  and  the  Hadleys,  to  a  new  and  re- 
deemed life.  I  see  that  only  through  Christ  can  come 
enduring  peace  and  joy,  deliverance  from  the  hell 
of  unrest  and  uncertainty  that  my  life  since  its  (this 
may  seem  incredible,  but  it  is  true)  seventh  year, 
has  been.  One  trouble  with  me  is  that  in  a  way  Paul 


1 68  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

never  dreamed  of,  I  am  'all  things  to  all  men.'  I 
am  dangerously  responsive  to  the  personality  and 
belief  of  the  person  I  chance  to  be  with.  There  seem 
to  be  elements  of  my  complex  character  that  corre- 
spond to  the  individuality  of  each  man  I  chance  to 
be  with.  In  the  presence  of  a  strong  Christian,  all 
my  readiness  of  belief  gets  into  action,  my  better 
nature  is  summoned  to  the  surface,  I  yearn  with  him 
to  see  the  world  saved  for  Christ.  But  if,  an  hour 
later,  I  am  talking  with  an  agnostic,  I  have  to  admit 
that  after  all,  we  know  nothing,  that  the  curtain  of 
death  is  stretched  before  the  world,  and  no  one 
knows  what  lies  beyond,  men  can  only  speculate  and 
believe  and  hope,  and  scarce  two  men  believe  alike; 
that  not  a  dozen  men  of  my  acquaintance  really  take 
their  religion  very  seriously  and  are  burning  "with 
zeal  to  save  their  'lost'  friends  from  everlasting  dam- 
nation, but  are  rather  content  in  living  an  average, 
well-meaning  life,  and  exerting  no  effort  to  rescue  the 
perishing.  If  Christ's  promises  are  living  realities, 
why  does  n't  his  transmuting  power  take  hold  and 
work  powerfully  on  all  men  who  try  to  accept  him, 
and  not  on  a  few  isolated  ones  here  and  there  ?  Why 
are  n't  more  of  us  among  the  mighty  men,  since  grace 
is  abounding  and  full  and  free  to  all  ?  Why  are 
not  all  Christians  'regenerated' — whatever  that  proc- 
ess involves  ?  I  have  only  begun  to  speak  out  what 
is  in  my  heart,  and  has  long  been  yearning  to  utter 
itself,  and  I  know  I  have  n't  made  my  position  clear, 
but  I  seem  to  have  no  position.  I  believe  everything 


Progress  and  Patience  169 

and  nothing.  My  life  is  a  paradox  that  I  contemplate 
with  hopeless  wonder,  and  I  wonder  if  I  am  doomed 
to  this  always.  Forgive  the  egotism  of  this  letter, 
and  do  n't  please  think  one  word  is  not  sincere,  or 
that  I  would  have  burdened  you  with  all  this  raving 
if  it  were  not  that  I  could  not  keep  it  back,  and  there 
is  always  the  hope  that  I  may  find  what  I  have  been 
honestly,  but  futilely,  seeking  for  all  my  life — the 
boundless  peace  of  Christ.  Do  n't  answer  if  you  are 
too  busy.  I  shall  understand." 

I  sent  him  in  reply  eight  suggestions  as  to  how 
a  conscientious  but  unsatisfied  man  may  find  free- 
dom and  peace  of  heart: 

"  1.  Think  about  Jesus  Christ  and  not  about  yourself. 

2.  Do  the  sort  of  things  for  other  people  that  you  would 
do  if  you  loved  them. 

3.  I).,  not  evi  r  talk  of  yourself  or  boast  <M-  ~f-k  praise 
or  pity.     Remember  the  rules  of  Archbishop  TJensbif:  '  Not 
to  call  attention  to  crowded  work  or  petty  fatigues  or  trivial 
experiences.    To  heal  wounds  which  in  times  past  my  cruel 
and  careless  hands  have  made.    To  seek  no  favor,  no  com- 
passion ;  to  deserve,  not  ask  for  tenderness.    Not  to  feel  any 
uneasiness  when  my  advice  or  opinion  is  not  asked,  or  is  set 
aside.' 

4.  Do  with  absolute  faithfulness  every  duty. 

5.  Rejoice  at  all  the  good  you  see  in  others  and  all  the 
honors  they  achieve,  and  admire  all  that  is  admirable  in  all 
things. 

6.  Counteract  all  beginnings  of  evil,  whether  of  thought 
or  of  act,  by  some  positive  thought  or  deed  of  good. 

7.  Do  not  do  evil,  thus  avoiding  remorse,  and  will  to  love, 
thus  winning  peace. 

8.  Do  not  be  impatient.    Go  on  coveting  the  best  and 
highest,  but  remember  that  time  is  necessary  for  all  things — 


1 70  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

to  separate  us  from  all  past  failure  and  shame  and  to  bring 
us  to  the  goal,  and  remember  that  it  will  be  unconsciously, 
probably,  that  we  shall  draw  nearer  to  it. 

'  One  prayed  in  vain  to  paint  the  vision  blest, 
Which  shone  upon  his  heart  by  night  and  day. 
But  homely  duties  in  his  dwelling  pressed, 
And  hungry  hearts  that  would  not  turn  away, 
And  cares  that  still  his  eager  hands  bade  stay. 
The  canvas  never  knew  the  pictured  Face, 
But  year  by  year,  while  yet  the  vision  shone, 
An  angel  near  him,  wondering,  bent  to  trace 
On  his  own  life  the  Master's  image  grown 
And  unto  men  made  known.'  " 

But  the  lesson  of  patience  is  hard  to  learn.  Men 
realize  that  progress  is  necessary  and  to  be  secured 
only  by  struggle.  They  struggle,  accordingly,  but 
they  soon  make  failure.  Then  they  are  prone  to  lose 
heart  and  to  think  that  there  is  no  place  for  them  in 
the  company  of  those  who  succeed.  But  there  is  no 
line  of  division  cutting  men  into  two  classes,  those 
who  succeed  and  those  who  fail.  We  may  sometimes 
say  that  some  men  succeed  better  than  others,  or, 
speaking  more  accurately,  some  do  not  fail  quite  as 
badly  as  others ;  but  we  know  perfectly  well  that  all 
these  men  belong  to  the  same  class,  that  in  which 
Paul  says  he  is  standing  when  he  declares,  "I  count 
not  myself  yet  to  have  apprehended."  All  fail.  Men 
are  not  differentiated  by  failures  but  they  are  di- 
vided into  three  very  distinct  and  clearly  marked 
groups,  determined  by  the  attitude  which  they  take 
toward  their  unattainment  and  their  failure. 

There  are,  first  of  all,  the  men  who  deny  that  they 


Progress  and  Patience  171 

have  failed,  and  who  are  quite  satisfied  with  what 
they  regard  as  their  success.  There  are,  second,  the 
men  who  admit  that  they  have  failed,  and  who  are 
disheartened  by  it,  and  purpose  to  relinquish  the 
struggle;  and  there  are,  third,  the  men  who  admit 
that  they  have  failed  and  have  not  attained,  but  who 
take  from  their  own  consciousness  of  unattainment 
fresh  courage  and  resolution  as  to  the  future. 

All  of  us  know  representatives  of  these  three 
groups.  We  are  acquainted  with  the  man  who  is  per- 
fectly contented  with  what  he  has  succeeded  in  do- 
ing. I  knew  a  man  once  who  could  drive  a  golf  ball 
further  than  any  other  living  man,  who  could  sing 
better  than  any  other  man,  who  could  play  polo  and 
cast  a  fly  better,  who  could  make  a  better  recitation 
in  physics  than  any  other  man,  who  could  drop  more 
goals,  and  from  a  more  distant  line,  than  any  one 
else.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  never  did  any  of  these 
things,  but  there  was  always  some  perfectly  valid 
reason  for  it.  He  was  just  a  little  off  his  game,  or 
he  was  out  of  practice  a  trifle,  or  he  was  not  really 
trying,  or  he  was  having  mercy  on  the  other  man, 
who  would  feel  badly  if  he  was  beaten.  The  conse- 
quence was  that  he  never  accomplished  any  of  the 
things  that  he  was  entirely  satisfied  that  he  could 
accomplish  if  he  wanted  to.  There  are  many  men 
with  this  constitutional  self-content,  who  have  never 
understood  what  it  was  to  be  dissatisfied  with  their 
lives.  Sometimes  we  are  disposed  to  envy  them.  But 
we  are  wrong.  The  child  who  is  born  into  poverty, 


172  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

but  with  the  blessing  of  a  great  sense  of  personal 
need,  is  vastly  less  to  be  pitied  than  the  man  *who  is 
born  into  an  affluent  and  comfortable  home,  but  with 
no  sense  of  personal  unattainment  or  incomplete- 
ness of  life.  We  meet  men  constantly  who  belong  to 
this  first  class,  out  of  a  certain  sheer  optimism  or  a 
blind  ignorance  of  what  life  and  its  ideals  really  are ; 
but  for  the  most  part,  men  fall  into  this  class  be- 
cause they  make  the  supreme  and  common  mistake 
of  identifying  their  ideals  with  their  attainments. 
Whatever  they  succeed  in  doing,  that  is  all  that  could 
be  expected  of  them.  If  they  manage  to  hit  off  some- 
thing, that  is  their  future  ideal.  Or  they  look  around 
at  the  men  about  them,  and  they  take  up  the  average 
notion  of  morality,  the  average  notion  of  character, 
the  average  notion  of  discipline  in  will,  and  they 
make  these  average  attainments  of  men  the  ideals  of 
their  lives. 

Is  there  one  of  us  unfamiliar  with  this  type  and 
temper  of  human  character?  We  see  it  often  in 
preachers.  Here  is  a  preacher  who  never  preaches 
a  sermon  with  which  he  is  not  satisfied.  He  comes 
down  from  the  pulpit  and  expects  the  people  to  tell 
him  what  a  fine  achievement  it  was,  and  goes  home 
in  bubbling  self-congratulation  over  what  he  did. 
You  can  usually  discriminate  that  man  from  this 
other  man  who  never  succeeds  in  doing  the  thing  that 
he  wants  to  do,  who  never  speaks  without  feeling 
shame  and  contrition  for  the  imperfection  of  his 
work.  And  the  simple  difference  between  them  is 


Progress  and  Patience  173 

that  the  first  man  is  judging  his  life  by  his  attain- 
ments as  his  ideals,  and  the  second  is  ruling  his  life 
by  the  ideals  that  he  has  not  yet  gained,  and  to 
which  he  hopes,  through  whatever  struggle  or  agony 
of  soul,  some  day  to  come. 

There  are  great  religions  that  separate  them- 
selves from  one  another  precisely  at  this  point.  When 
Wu  Ting  Fang  was  in  this  country,  he  often  remarked 
on  this  as  the  fundamental  distinction  between 
Christianity  and  Confucianism.  To  his  mind  it  was 
an  advantage  in  Confucianism,  that  it  set  before  men 
the  practicable  thing,  that  its  ideals  were  human  at- 
tainments, while  Christianity  had  made,  as  he 
deemed  it,  the  stupendous  blunder  of  setting  before 
men  as  the  thing  that  was  required  of  them  an  im- 
practicable ideal.  Mr.  Wu  Ting  Fang  saw  with  his 
customary  acuteness,  though  his  moral  judgment  on 
the  matter  differed  from  ours,  the  real  essential  dis- 
tinction between  the  Christian  view  and  every  other 
view  in  the  world.  Our  view  challenges  us  to  rule 
our  lives,  not  by  the  things  that  can  be  easily  done, 
but  by  the  things  that  we  are  not  yet  able  to  do ;  to 
judge  our  lives  not  by  our  best  attainments,  but  by 
the  dreams  of  what  some  day  we  may  hope  to  attain ; 
and  the  crime  of  Christianity  is  not  to  fail,  but  to 
aim  low,  or  not  to  aim  at  all. 

All  of  us  meet  also  those  who  belong  to  the 
second  class,  made  up  of  the  men  who  admit  that 
they  have  failed  and  who  are  discouraged  by  it.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  no  man  always  does  his  best.  He 


174  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

may  think  that  he  does  at  times,  but  he  knows  in  his 
best  hours  that  he  never  has  succeeded  in  doing  so. 
Again  and  again  he  falls  short  Never  can  he  say, 
looking  back  over  any  given  time,  or  at  any  effort, 
"I  have  done  the  best  of  which  I  am  capable."  We 
often  console  ourselves  by  saying  that  we  have.  That 
was  what  "Manny"  Holabird  used  to  say.  When 
the  game  was  over  and  his  team  whipped,  "Well,  fel- 
lows," he  would  say,  "we  did  our  best  anyhow." 
Nobody  knew  better  than  "Manny"  that  they  had  not 
done  their  best,  but  that  was  his  way  of  cheering 
men  up  to  try  it  over  and  to  see  if  the  next  time  they 
could  not  come  a  little  nearer  to  doing  their  best 
than  they  had  done  the  time  before. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  best  man  never  does  his 
best.  That  was  the  agony  of  the  life  of  Paul;  he 
never  realized  his  ideals.  He  "looked  back  over  his 
life,  and  always  saw  something  that  he  had  not  suc- 
ceeded in  doing.  He  had  seen  something  in  the 
seventh  heaven  that  he  could  not  speak  to  men ;  there 
was  always  something  in  his  ideal  for  his  work  that 
he  could  not  fully  realize  in  the  performance.  Again 
and  again  he  flings  his  grammar  aside,  in  his  attempt 
to  get  at  some  great  truth  that  he  is  feeling  for,  and 
can  not  put  so  that  men  to  whom  he  speaks  will  take 
hold  of  the  great  thing  that  has  flashed  with  the  bril- 
liancy of  the  sunlight  before  his  own  mind,  but  can 
not  be  crowded  into  speech.  It  must  have  been  the 
perpetual  pain  of  the  life  of  Paul  that  he  never  did 
his  best. 


Progress  and  Patience  175 

We  never  do  our  best.  If  at  any  given  moment  in 
our  lives  we  have  thought  that  we  have  done  so,  the 
very  act  of  doing  our  best  has  discovered  to  us  that 
we  were  mistaken.  It  is  like  a  man  climbing  hills. 
He  sees  a  steep  hill  in  front  of  him,  and  says,  "Now 
when  I  reach  the  top  of  that,  my  climb  will  be  done ;" 
and,  lo !  the  top  of  that  hill  shows  him  a  higher  one 
just  beyond  that  was  hidden  to  his  view  before ;  and 
he  climbs  that  second  one,  and,  lo !  beyond  it  reaches 
range  after  range  that  the  second  hill  had  hid  from 
sight.  The  very  act  of  a  man's  once  doing  his  best  is 
the  creation  of  a  whole  brood  of  new  ideals  for  him ; 
henceforth  he  dreams  in  larger  dreams.  The  fact 
of  that  one  victory  has  given  him  the  possibility  of 
conceiving  greater  victories  yet  for  his  life,  and  he 
lives  forever  as  he  lives  truly  in  the  knowledge  that 
he  never  will  do  his  best. 

In  the  face  of  these  facts,  some  say,  "Well,  if  a 
man  can  not  hope  always  to  do  his  best,  and  if  the 
truer  man  he  is  the  less  he  can  hope  ever  to  do  his 
best,  what  is  the  use  in  trying  at  all  ?  Is  there  any 
peace  in  ever  climbing  up  the  climbing  wave  ?" 
There  are  hundreds  of  men  whom  we  know,  some 
of  them  here  in  our  own  breasts,  within  the  range  of 
our  personal  life,  who,  as  they  have  confronted  the 
inevitable  unattainment  of  a  true  life,  are  discour- 
aged by  it,  and  are  disposed  to  abandon  the  whole 
effort  to  attain.  I  have  two  objections  to  make  to 
that  course  in  myself  and  in  other  men. 

In  the  first  place,    it  is  not  manlike  for  a  man 


1 76  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

to  give  up  the  struggle  simply  because  lie  knows  that 
iii  certain  particular  crises  his  enemies  will  be  too 
much  for  him.  We  would  scorn  to  belong  to  an  ath- 
letic team  which  would  never  challenge  anybody 
whom  it  could  not  whip.  One  of  the  most  exhilarat- 
ing experiences  I  ever  had  was  in  a  meeting  in  a 
Western  college  several  years  ago,  when  the  football 
team  had  been  unmercifully  thrashed  for  about  two 
months  and  had  just  about  lost  its  heart  and  was  dis- 
posed to  cancel  the  rest  of  its  games.  The  college 
had  only  about  three  hundred  students,  a  third  of 
whom  were  young  women,  and  of  the  men  a  good 
proportion  were  little  boys  in  the  academy.  This 
reduced  the  number  of  available  men  to  eighty  or 
ninety;  and  they  were  playing  against  big.  State  Uni- 
versities which  had  a  thousand  or  more  men  to  choose 
from.  I  did  not  wonder  that  they  were  tempted  to 
be  a  little  discouraged.  A  college  meeting  was  called 
to  consider  the  matter,  and  this  was  the  way  it  was 
put:  "Now,  fellows,  this  is  just  the  whole  core  of  the 
thing :  We  can  not  expect  to  develop  here  out  of  sixty 
or  seventy  men  the  kind  of  teams  that  can  be  devel- 
oped up  at or  over  in ;  we  have  not 

the  material  to  do  it  with ;  arid  if  we  propose  to  run 
ourselves  on  the  principle  that  we  will  play  only 
when  we  can  win  victories  over  our  opponents,  we 
might  just  as  well  go  out  of  this  business  altogether. 
Eut  if  we  will  go  into  this  thing  with  the  full  under- 
standing that  the  best  victories  men  can  win,  are  the 
victories  they  win  over  themselves,  we  can  get  a  repu- 


Progress  and  Patience  177 

tation  out  here  in  the  West,  maybe  not  for  winning 
games  over  others,  but  for  being  the  gamest  set  of 
men  to  be  found  out  here.  If  we  will  stop  this  busi- 
ness of  depending  on  the  enthusiasm  of  the  throats, 
and  rely  a  little  bit  more  on  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
square  jaw,  we  can  do  here  the  thing  that  we  can  do, 
which  is  all  that  can  be  expected  of  us."  As  he  spoke 
the  iron  came  back  into  their  blood,  and  the  true 
spirit  of  a  man  re-awoke  in  those  students,  as  they 
realized  that  life  was  given  us  not  that  in  it  we  might 
win  victory  over  our  foes,  but  that  in  it  we  should 
win  victory  over  ourselves. 

You  may  remember  the  incident,  in  one  of  Zack's 
1  orkshire  stories,  of  the  Yorkshire  man  who  got  sick 
of  his  life  and  went  out  one  moonlight  night,  and 
rigged  up  his  gun  in  the  woods,  and  put  the  muzzle 
of  it  against  his  head,  and  was  about  to  push  the  trig- 
ger with  his  toe,  when  something  stirred  in  his  heart. 
He  looked  up  and  saw  the  moonlight  filtering  down 
through  the  leaves,  and  he  kicked  his  gun  into  the 
thicket,  and  drawled :  "Naw,  I  '11  not  do  it.  There  's 
zummat  in  me  aside  the  dog.  I  '11  live  game  and  zee 
it  through ;"  and  he  went  back  to  live  his  life  game 
and  see  it  through.  Howsoever  many  the  difficulties 
that  assail  me  as  I  dream  my  dreams  and  try  to  real- 
ize them  in  my  life,  I  am  no  man  if  I  will  not  live 
game  and  see  it  through. 

I  object  to  surrender,  in  the  second  place,  because 
it  is  not  Christlike.  What  difficulties  Jesus  Christ 
had  to  contend  against  in  making  Himself  what  He 

12 


178  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

wanted  to  be,  we  can  not  say ;  what  conflict  went  on  in 
Him  before  that  divine  life  subdued  the  human  life 
in  which  it  was  encased.  The  temptation  gives  us 
some  strange  and  mysterious  insight  into  it,  but  no 
man  of  us  can  ever  fathom  the  depth  of  its  meaning. 
But  we  can  understand  something  of  what  Christ 
wrestled  with  in  His  outside  circumstances.  Wtat 
He  was  attempting  to  do,  and  the  odds  that  rose  up 
against  Him  and  met  Him,  would  have  made  a  mere 
man  sure  that  the  thing  could  not  be  done.  He 
dreamed  His  dream  of  a  Christian  Church,  of  the 
tine  type  of  character  it  was  to  beget,  of  everything 
it  was  to  do  in  the  world,  and  he  had  eleven  or  twelve 
heavy,  clod-born  men  out  of  a  little  obscure  prov- 
ince of  the  Roman  Empire  with  whom  to  begin,  with 
whom  to  lay  the  foundations,  or  in  whom  to  plant  the 
finest  conceptions  that  ever  broke  on  the  soul  of  man. 
Did  Jesus  Christ  say,  "I  shall  never  get  My  dream 
accomplished  in  these  men  ?"  Did  He  say,  "I  shall 
never  get  this  great  fellowship  to  which  I  strive,  set 
up  here  in  this  heavy,  sin-clogged  world?"  Never! 
Be  dreamed  His  dream  and  He  lived  for  it  without 
dismay,  and  we  are  neither  like  Him  nor  like  our  best 
selves  if,  standing  face  to  face  with  failure,  the  real- 
ity of  which  we  must  admit,  we  say,  "Well,  let  us 
give  it  up  and  stop." 

That  was  not  the  attitude  of  Paul,  who  stands 
forth  as  a  representative  of  the  men  who  admit 
that  they  have  failed,  who  realize  that  they  have 
not  attained  their  ideals,  but  who  find  in  that  con- 


Progress  and  Patience  179 

seiousness  a  great  exhilaration  and  joy.  "Brethren," 
he  says,  "I  count  not  myself  yet  to  have  appre- 
hended." I  do  not  see  there  any  wail  or  lamenta- 
tion. It  seems  to  me  there  is  the  undertone  of  a  great 
gladness  in  Paul's  words,  as  though  he  said:  "I  am 
thankful  I  have  not  worked  my  way  through  to  the 
other  side  of  God.  I  am  thankful  I  have  not  reached 
beyond  my  ideals,  so  that  instead  of  shining  as  stars 
in  my  skies  they  are  dust  beneath  my  feet.  Breth- 
ren, I  count  not  myself  yet  to  have  apprehended. 
This  one  thing  I  do,  forgetting  the  unattainments 
and  the  failures  that  are  behind,  and  stretching  forth 
unto  the  possibilities  that  are  before,  I  press  on 
toward  the  mark  for  the  prize  of  the  upward  calling 
of  God  in  Christ  Jesus." 

He  realized  that  the  very  joy  and  paradox  of  life 
lie  in  the  delight  that  we  find  in  our  consciousness  of 
our  unattainment  of  the  best.  I  do  not  say  that  there 
is  virtue  in  failure,  but  there  is  virtue  and  power  in 
discovering  that  you  have  failed.  There  is  no  glory 
in  not  having  attained,  but  there  is  a  glory  in  being 
conscious  that  we  have  not  attained,  and  that  there 
is  something  better  and  more  splendid  yet  before  life 
to  be  reached.  And  it  is  a  far  greater  thing  to  fail 
in  attempting  a  great  thing  than  it  is  to  succeed  in 
attempting  some  small  and  pitiful  thing.  It  is  so  in 
truth.  It  is  better,  as  Dr.  Parkhurst  said  once,  for 
a  man  to  be  overwhelmed  by  a  great  truth  than  to 
overwhelm  a  small  truth.  It  is  more  satisfying  to  a 
man  to  be  unable  to  take  in  all  of  some  noble  divine 


i8o  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

thought  and  stand  baffled  before  it,  than  to  be  wholly 
able  to  take  in  some  petty,  microscopic  fact  and  feel 
that  he  is  sovereign  of  that  little  fact.  Surely  it  is 
a  greater  thing  to  fail  a  bit  in  trying  to  take  in  God 
than  to  succeed  in  dissecting  a  bug.  In  India  there 
are  hundreds  of  men  who  write  after  their  names, 
"Failed  B.  A.,"  "Failed  M.  A."  That  means  that 
they  tried  for  the  degree  of  bachelor  or  master  of  arts 
and  did  not  get  it.  To  be  sure  they  are  not  as  well 
satisfied  as  if  they  could  drop  the  "Failed,"  but  they 
are  far  better  satisfied  than  the  man  who  can  not 
even  say,  "I  tried  for  it."  They  go  out  into  the  world 
conscious  at  least  that  they  were  counted  worthy  to 
make  the  effort  to  succeed,  and  that  they  made  that 
effort 

"  For  thence,— a  paradox 
Which  comforts  while  it  mocks, — 
Shall  life  succeed  in  that  it  seems  to  fail : 
What  I  aspired  to  be, 
And  was  not,  comforts  me." 

Even  if  I  did  not  succeed  yesterday  in  keeping 
every  evil  thought  out  of  my  mind,  I  am  glad  I  tried ; 
and  if  I  did  not  succeed  this  morning  in  seeing  all 
the  vision  for  which  my  heart  hungered,  I  am  glad 
at  least  that  I  knelt  down  and  sought  after  it.  We 
have  begun  to  enter  into  the  real  delight  and  joy  of 
our  living  only  when  we  realize  that  the  best  of  life 
is  that  part  that  is  yet  to  be,  what  we  have  not  yet  at- 
tained, what,  once  we  have  attained  it,  God  in  His 
goodness  will  make  us  discontented  with,  and  set  us 


Progress  and  Patience  181 

on  after  the  yet  better  things.  "I  count  not  myself 
yet  to  have  apprehended;  I  press  on" — and  note 
Paul's  words,  "I  press  on  toward  the  mark;"  not 
"of  the  prize  of  the  high  calling,"  but  "of  the  up- 
ward calling,"  as  the  Greek  says.  It  is  a  progressive 
word.  The  mark  never  stands  still.  Paul  knew  per- 
fectly well  that  when  he  had  arrived,  the  goal  would 
not  be  there ;  it  would  have  moved  on  a  little  distance. 
The  upward  calling  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus  will  not 
end  until  we  come  out  on  the  other  side  of  eternity. 
When  will  that  be?  We  condemn  ourselves  to  the 
life  of  utter  despair  and  hopelessness,  and  shut  our- 
selves out  of  the  true  joy  and  exhilaration  of  living, 
if  we  can  not  say  with  Paul,  "We  have  not  yet  at- 
tained, but  we  follow  after."  Indeed  it  is  this  con- 
sciousness of  imperfectness  that  in  Paul's  view  con- 
stitutes perfect-mindedness.  "I  have  not  attained," 
he  says;  "as  many  of  you  as  are  perfect  be  like- 
minded." 

This  sense  of  unattainment  is  necessary,  to  save  a 
man's  ideals  for  him.  A  little  while  ago  we  received 
a  letter  in  our  office  from  a  man  out  on  the  Pacific 
Coast.  He  was  offering  himself  for  missionary  serv- 
ice, and  this  is  actually  what  he  wrote : 

"  I  have  entirely  consecrated  my  life  to  the  Savior's 
work,  by  denying  myself,  and  taking  up  my  cross  and  doing 
whatsoever  He  wants  me  to  do.  My  spiritual  gifts  consist 
of  the  Grace  of  God,  the  precious  one  of  His  eternal  pres- 
ence in  my  heart,  mind,  soul,  and  body.  Being  baptized 
fully  and  completely  with  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Holy  Ghost, 
and  Comforter,  I  have  also  received  power  of  speech  and 


1 82  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

utterance,  with  clear  enunciation.  I  am  prepared  with  it, 
and  the  sustaining  power  of  the  omnipotent,  omniscient, 
and  omnipresent,  pure  and  holy  Jehovah,  to  do  His  good 
will  wherever  I  go.  My  intellectual  abilities  consist  of  a 
higher  English  collegiate  education.  Am  a  graduate  of  the 
oldest  dental  college  in  the  world.  This  knowledge  I  could 
use  successfully  in  the  relief  and  cure  of  pain,  when  in  the 
work.  My  physical  health  is  good  and  strong,  and  can  en- 
dure hardship  cheerfully.  Being  patient  under  trials  and 
difficulties,  I  believe  I  am  ordained  and  consecrated  by  God 
and  His  H<?ly  Son  to  be  set  apart  for  His  Holy  work.  I  feel 
that  I  am  fully  qualified  to  enter  the  work  you  may  require 
of  me." 

Now  "what  can  you  do  for  a  man  like  that  \  Is 
there  any  hope  left  for  such  a  man,  whose  ideals  have 
sunk  clear  down  into  the  tarn  of  his  own  plain  and 
commonplace  life  \  He  sees  no  dreams  who  measures 
his  life  in  this  way.  The  only  way  in  which  we  can 
keep  our  ideals  alive  is  to  believe  that  they  have  not 
yet  been  attained,  and  that  they  wait  for  us  beyond 
the  sunset  until  we  come  to  them,  when  they  will 
wait  for  us  in  the  evening  glow  of  the  sunset  just 
beyond. 

As  the  sense  of  unattainment  is  necessary  in 
order  to  save  our  ideals ;  it  is  necessary  in  order 
to  save  our  characters  also.  Read  through  the 
life  of  Paul,  and  I  think  you  will  find  that 
one  great  human  secret  of  his  influence  was 
this  sense  of  lowliness,  of  modest  right  perspective. 
He  never  for  a  moment  slips  over  into  that  realm 
where  self-boasting  would  rob  him  of  his  influence 
with  men.  "Brothers,"  he  says,  "I  count  not  myself 


Progress  and  Patience  183 

to  have  apprehended."  One  purpose  of  that  letter 
was  to  discover  to  the  Philippians  some  defects  in 
their  own  lives.  Read  it  from  that  point  of  view,  and 
you  can  see  the  tact  with  which  Paul  attempts  to  show 
the  self-satisfied  people  in  the  church  how  far  they 
were  from  having  any  grounds  for  such  self-satisfac- 
tion ;  and  in  the  middle  of  his  statement  he  puts  this 
tactful  declaration  about  hdmself.  "You  need  not 
think,"  he  says,  "that  I  am  judging  you  by  any  dif- 
ferent standards  from  those  by  which  I  judge  my- 
self. I  am  no  perfect  man.  I  have  not  attained  yet,!t- 

Many  Christians  refrain  from  doing  personal 
work  because  they  think  it  would  make  them  seem 
like  Pharisees*  "We  are  no  better,"  they  declare, 
"than  the  men  we  try  to  reach,  and  if  we  went  to 
them  and  said,  'Xow,  my  friend,  won't  you  come  to 
Christ?'  they  would  look  at  us  and  say:  'Yon  are 
not  any  better  than  I  am.  Why  are  you  talking  to 
me  in  this  way  f  '  Paul  never  fell  into  any  such 
error  of  personal  perspective  as  that.  He  did  not 
say  to  men:  "I  have  succeeded  where  you  have 
failed.  Come  and  be  like  me."  He  said :  "O  men, 
we  have  all  failed  together.  I  do  not  count  myself  to 
have  apprehended  any  more  than  you  have ;  but  this 
is  the  thing  that  I  am  doing ;  can  you  not  do  it,  too  ?  \ 
Can't  you  see  that  it  is  the  only  worthy  thing  to  do  ?  \ 
Forgetting  the  failures  that  are  behind,  I  stretch 
forward  to  the  things  that  are  before." 

It  is  this  same  sense  of    unattainment  that  is 
necessary  to  center  a  man  on  God.     That  man  who 


1 84  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

thinks  he  can  do  everything  perfectly  has  no  need  of 
God  in  his  life.  He  is  his  own  little  god.  But  it  is 
when  the  man  has  realized  how  incomplete,  unfash- 
ioned,  ragged,  and  rough  his  life  is,  that  he  is  flung 
back  to  rest  on  God.  You  know  the  lines  in  Martin 
Luther's  great  hymn,  in  which  he  says  that  if  we 
did  "in  our  own  strength  confide,  our  struggling 
would  be  losing."  It  is  because  we  have  "the  right 
Man  on  our  side,  the  Man  of  God's  own  choosing," 
and  lean  on  His  strength  by  the  very  sense  of  our  un- 
attainment,  that  we  do  the  impossible  thing.  That  is 
the  principle  that  Joseph  Mazzini  puts  in  a  profound 
saying  of  his  in  one  of  hiis  essays,  "The  morrow  of 
victory  is  more  perilous  than  its  eve."  Our  need  is 
greatest  when  our  sense  of  need  is  least.  We  realize 
this  when  any  great  conspicuous  struggle  of  life  is 
over,  -and  we  slip  out  into  the  old  life  again.  We 
find  that  then,  far  more  than  in  the  supposed  critical 
hour,  we  need  the  help  of  God  and  must  lean  on  Him. 
The  very  peril  of  the  hour  that  comes  after  victory 
is  this :  that  in  that  hour  men  take  the  achievement 
of  the  victory  as  the  ideal  of  their  life,  and  rest  upon 
themselves  instead  of  upon  God,  on  whom  the  man  in 
the  hour  of  his  own  conscious  insufficiency  and  fail- 
ure can  not  fail  to  lean.  We  see  all  this  in  the  life 
of  Jesus  Christ.  Why  is  it  that  again  and  again 
after  the  great  crises  of  His  life  He  goes  off  to  pray  ? 
Because  He  knows  that  in  those  hours  the  temptation 
comes  to  man  to  lean  down  on  what  he  has  done,  to 
make  his  past  accomplishment  the  level  of  his  future 


Progress  and  Patience  185 

effort,  instead  of  being  aware  that  now  yet  greater 
things  are  needed  in  his  life  and  greater  heights  are 
to  be  climbed,  and  that  he  must  center  his  life  yet 
more  deeply  upon  God. 

We  feel  and  enlarge  our  powers  only  against  the 
resistance  that  breeds  the  sense  of  unattaimnent  in 
us.  It  is  only  as  I  know  that  I  have  faced  one  of 
the  limitations  of  my  life,  that  the  strength  awakens 
to  overcome  it.  The  charges  of  failure  in  our  lives, 
and  now  and  then  the  consciousness  of  having  failed, 
are  God's  best  blessings  to  us,  His  challenge  to  us  to 
move  up  to  a  new  level  of  life.  You  remember  the 
way  this  truth  is  flung  at  us  in  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra: 

"  Then,  welcome  each  rebuff 

That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough, 
Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand  but  go ! 

Be  our  joy  three-parts  pain ! 

Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain; 
Learn,  nor  account  the  pang:  dare,  never  grudge 

the  throe!" 

We  should  sink  down  into  the  life  of  the  beast 
if  it  were  not  for  the  sting  that  now  and  then  whips 
life  into  a  new  examination  of  itself,  and  challenges 
life  to  the  larger  and  better  achievements  that  are 
set  before  it  in  the  metaphor  of  the  cross. 

The  men  who  have  made  the  great  successes  are 
often  the  men  who  had  to  fail  a  long  time  and  be  pa- 
tient before  at  last  success  came.  Eleven  years  ago 
there  died  at  Tunbridge  Wells  a  nearly  forgotten  old 
man,  who  was  as  good  an  illustration  as  any,  of  this 


1 86  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

great  class.  "Sir  Rowland  Macdonald  Stephenson," 
as  the  London  Spectator  of  November  30,  1895,  told 
his  story,  "had  every  reason  as  a  young  man  to  ex- 
pect a  large  fortune  and  a  political  career,  when  a 
great  family  disaster  compelled  him  to  devote  him- 
self to  active  work.  He  had  some  knowledge, — not  a 
great  deal, — of  civil  engineering,  and  after  serving 
for  some  time  as  secretary  to  an  association  for  pro- 
moting steam  communication  with  the  East,  he  went 
to  India,  resolved  to  commence  there  a  great  system 
of  railway  enterprise.  He  besieged  the  officials,  pub- 
lished pamphlets,  wrote  articles,  collected  engineer- 
ing reports,  and  worried  every  one  in  power,  until  at 
last  he  found  a  statesman  in  Lord  Dalhousie,  who 
could  understand  the  breadth  of  has  plans.  Backed 
by  the  whole  force  of  the  mighty  Viceroy,  whose  con- 
quest of  the  Punjab  had  made  him  absolute  even 
over  Anglo-Indian  opinion,  he  returned  to  England, 
interested  great  capitalists  in  the  cause,  converted  or 
coerced  the  Court  of  Directors,  who  were,  we  believe, 
afraid  of  the  power  which  might  accrete  to  a  great 
'Railway  Interest'  in  India,  and  was  appointed  man- 
aging director  of  the  East  India  Railway,  the  first 
and  most  important  of  the  great  lines.  He  returned 
to  Calcutta,  and  there,  with  feeble  health,  no  'knowl- 
edge of  the  country'  in  the  ordinary  sense — he  knew 
as  little  as  Clive  of  any  native  language — he  sat  for 
years,  rarely  stirring  out  of  has  office,  driving  with 
the  energy  of  five  men  the  vast  concern.  There  were 
difficulties  with  the  Government,  difficulties  with  the 


Progress  and  Patience  187 

native  landlords,  difficulties  with  the  contractors,  and 
twice,  at  least,  any  other  man  would  have  returned 
deadbeat;  but  Macdonald  Stephenson  never  lost 
heart,  or  patience,  or  temper  with  any  obstacle.  As 
we  have  said,  he  knew  little  of  enginearing  as  ah  art; 
he  wrote  with  a  certain  difficulty,  in  a  queer  snippety 
way;  and  he  was  a  little  intolerant  of  fools;  but  he 
had  always  a  plan,  always  a  man,  and  always,  when 
dealing  with  officials,  an  infinity  of  persuasiveness. 
He  became  the  very  soul  of  the  undertaking;  every 
engineer  under  him — and  he  had  one  man  of  genius 
and  many  able  men — knew  he  could  rely  upon  sup- 
port ;  and,  however  great  the  difficulties,  he  demanded 
that  the  work  should  get  on; — that  nobody  should 
talk  of  impossibilities;  that  impracticable  rivers 
should  be  bridged;  that  non-existent  labor  should  be 
imported ;  that  the  indispensable  class  of  minor  con- 
tractors who  did  not  exist,  and  could  not  be  imported, 
should  be  created  out  of  the  ground  (such  a  lot  these 
latter  were  at  first ! — declasse  natives,  shiftless  Eura- 
sians, drinking  Europeans,  broken  nondescripts  of 
all  sorts,  but  all  efficient  slave-drivers,  who  gradually 
learned  their  work  and  got  weeded  out  by  degrees). 
Of  course,  with  such  a  steam-motor  behind,  and  Mr. 
Trumbull,  the  chief  engineer,  to  do  any  impossible 
work,  the  road  rolled  on  until  at  last  it  reached  Delhi, 
and  Sir  Macdonald  Stephenson  returned  home  to  be 
the  guiding  spirit  of  the  Railway  Board.  He  thought 
his  work  had  only  begun,  for  the  dream  of  his  life 
was  not  to  found  an  Indian  Railway  system,  but  to 


1 88  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

beat  De  Lesseps  on  his  own  ground  and  open  a  direct 
railway  line  from  Calais  to  India ;  and  with  this  ob- 
ject he  interviewed,  and  as  a  rule  conquered,  nearly 
every  statesman  in  Europe,  including  some  very  diffi- 
cult Pashas ;  but  the  time  was  not  ripe.  There  were 
international  jealousies  without  end;  capitalists 
shook  their  heads,  and  asked  for  impossible  guar- 
antees; and  at  last,  we  fancy,  the  energy  of  the  ir- 
repressible advocate  of  'opening  up'  began  to  fail 
him.  He  possessed  vitality,  which  carried  him  on  to 
eighty-seven,  and  a  passion  for  music  that  helped  him 
to  throw  off  all  business  cares ;  but  he  had  sat  twenty 
years  in  a  steamy  Calcutta  office,  doing  work  equal 
to  that  of  a  great  Government,  and  it  told  on  him  in 
the  end.  He  had  begun  rather  late  in  life,  too,  for 
tropical  work ;  he  had  made  no  fortune  beyond  a  con- 
siderable life-annuity  voted  to  him  by  his  grateful 
company,  and  though  he  never  abandoned  his  great 
project,  and  to  the  end  of  his  active  life  kept  up  a 
brisk  correspondence  about  it,  he  died  of  old  age, 
without  disease  or  pain,  with  his  dream  unfulfilled." 
But  his  work  in  India  was  a  dream  fulfilled  and  ful- 
filled after  failure. 

It  is  by  failure  that  God  sifts  us  out.  Paul 
meant  to  embody  something  of  this  idea  in  his  con- 
ception of  the  uses  of  tribulation.  The  word  which 
he  uses  for  tribulation  is  derived  from  the  word  OXifiw, 
to  press,  as  grapes.  The  Vulgate  uses  the  Latin 
word  from  which  our  word  "tribulation"  is  derived. 
"Tribulation"  was  the  act  of  separation  of  grain 


Progress  and  Patience  189 

from  the  husk,  and  the  metaphor  was  caught  up  by 
some  Christian  writer,  as  Paul  had  used  the  meta- 
phor of  pressing  the  grapes,  to  indicate  the  separa- 
tion of  men  by  tribulations,  threshings,  or  pressings ; 
"of  whatever  in  them  was  light,  trivial,  and  poor, 
from  the  solid  and  the  true,"  as  George  Wither  wrote 
in  the  seventeenth  century : 

"  Till  from  the  straw  the  flail  the  corn  doth  beat, 
Until  the  chaff  be  purged  from  the  wheat, 
Yea  till  the  mill  the  grain  in  pieces  tear, 
The  richness  of  the  flour  will  scarce  appear. 
So,  till  men's  persons  great  affliction  touch, 
If  worth  be  found,  their  worth  is  not  so  much, 
Because  like  wheat  in  straw,  they  have  not  yet 
That  value  which  in  threshing  they  may  get. 
For  till  the  bruising  flails  of  God's  corrections 
Have  threshed  out  of  us  our  vain  affections ; 
Till  those  corruptions  which  do  misbecome  us 
Are  by  Thy  sacred  Spirit  winnowed  from  us ; 
Until  from  us  the  straw  of  worldly  treasures, 
Till  all  the  dusty  chaff  of  empty  pleasures, 
Yea,  till  His  flail  upon  us  He  doth  lay, 
To  thresh  the  husk  of  this  our  flesh  away ; 
And  leave  the  soul  uncovered  ;  nay,  yet  more, 
Till  God  shall  make  our  very  spirit  poor, 
We  shall  not  up  to  highest  wealth  aspire : 
But  then  we  shall ;  and  that  is  my  desire." 

And  so  also  Michael  Angelo : 

"  As  when,  O  Lady  mine,  with  chiseled  touch 
The  stone,  unhewn  and  cold, 
Becomes  the  living  mold, 

The  more  the  marble  wastes,  the  more  the  statue  grows ; 
So  if  the  working  of  my  soul  be  such 


190  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

That  good  is  but  evolved  by  Time's  dread  blows, 
The  vile  shell  day  by  day 
Falls  like  superfluous  flesh  away. 

0 1  take  whatever  bonds  my  spirit  knows : 

And  Reason,  Virtue,  Power,  within  me  lay." 

And  God  accounts  what  we  tried,  not  what  we 
succeed  in.  He  measures  life  not  by  its  attainments 
but  by  its  ideals  and  the  way  it  strove  for  them.  This 
too,  is  in  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra: 

"But  all,  the  world's  coarse  thumb 
And  finger  failed  to  plumb, 
So  passed  in  making  up  the  main  account ; 
All  instinct  immature, 
All  purposes  unsure, 

That  weighed  not  as  his  work,  yet  swelled 
the  man's  amount : 

"  Thoughts  hardly  to  be  packed 
Into  a  narrow  act, 
Fancies  that  broke  through  language  and 

escaped ; 

All  I  could  never  be, 
All,  men  ignored  in  me, 
This,  I  was  worth  to  God,  whose  wheel  the 

the  pitcher  shaped." 

There  is  a  world  of  comfort  here  for  the  man 
whose  battle  no  one  knows,  whose  defeat  men  see,  but 
not  the  fierce  conflict  within,  which  issued  in  defeat. 
But  God  saw  it  all  and  He  measures  the  man  not  by 
jvhat  he  did  but  by  what  he  tried  to  .do. 

I  think  it  was  the  consciousness  of  his  unattain- 
ment  that  gave  to  the  life  of  Paul  its  splendid  repose 
and  reserve  power.  Of  all  the  follies  and  the  f rivoli- 


Progress  and  Patience  191 

ties  that  ever  dawned  on  the  thought  of  man,  it  seems 
to  me  perfectionism  is  about  the  worst.  How  any 
man  can  twist  his  exegesis  of  the  Scriptures,  can 
twist  his  knowledge  of  human  life  around  to  such 
a  point  of  view,  passes  my  comprehension.  Paul 
never  for  a  moment  let  any  such  thought  enter  his 
mind.  As  he  looks  back  over  his  life,  it  is  this  con- 
sciousness of  incompleteness  that  gives  it  that  solid 
reticence  of  power  that  all  of  us  feel  there.  He  re- 
members the  day  when  he  put  Stephen  to  death,  and 
it  hangs  about  his  life  every  hour,  barring  him 
against  the  lightnesses  and  frivolities  that-  come  into 
the  soul  of  the  man  who  has  no  conscious  back  shad- 
ows of  failure  in  his  life.  I  suppose  Paul  never  lost 
from  his  memory  that  vision  of  Stephen's  face.  Fred- 
erick "W.  H.  Myers  speaks  of  it  in  his  study  of  Paul's 
inner  soul,  suggesting  that  he  had  ever  in  his  mind 
those  faces  of  the  men  and  women  whom  he  sought 
and  slew. 

"  Ah !  when  we  mingle  in  the  heavenly  places, 
How  will  I  weep  to  Stephen  and  to  you." 

And  in  his  new  life  the  consciousness  of  continued 
unattainment  was  making  him  the  man  he  was.  He 
fought  a  great  battle  with  sin.  When  he  would  do 
good,  evil  was  present  with  him.  He  was  conscious 
that  he  had  not  yet  attained,  and  it  made  him  an  in- 
finitely stronger  and  more  powerful  man. 

"Ay,  and  for  me  there  shot  from  the  beginning 

Pulses  of  passion  broken  with  my  breath ; 
O,  thou  poor  soul,  enwrapped  in  such  a  sinning, 
Bound  in  the  shameful  body  of  thy  death ! 


192  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

"  Well,  let  me  sin,  but  not  with  my  consenting, 

Well,  let  me  die,  but  willing  to  be  whole  ; 
Never,  O  Christ, — so  stay  me  from  relenting, — 
Shall  there  be  truce  betwixt  my  flesh  and  soul." 

I  think  it  was  out  of  the  agony  and  the  pathos  of 
his  consciously  defective  devotion,  that  the  greatest 
spiritual  power  of  the  Apostle  Paul  was  born. 

And  lastly,  it  is  this  very  sense  of  unattainment 
that  is  itself  the  prediction  that  some  day  we  shall 
attain.  The  law  of  habit  is  a  priceless  comfort  to  a 
man.  Though  he  seems  to  be  failing,  the  real  effort 
to  succeed,  repeated  and  repeated  and  repeated,  is 
hardening  into  the  stuff  of  character  for  him,  and 
some  day  he  will  wake  to  find  he  has  won  where  he 
had  always  lost.  "We  are  spinning  our  own  fates, 
good  or  evil,  and  never  to  be  undone,"  says  Professor 
James  in  his  Psychology.  "Every  smallest  stroke  of 
virtue  or  of  vice  leaves  its  never  so  little  scar.  The 
drunken  Rip  Van  Winkle,  in  Jefferson's  play,  ex- 
cuses himself  for  every  fresh  dereliction  by  saying,  'I 
won't  count  this  time !'  Well !  he  may  not  count  it, 
and  a  kind  Heaven  may  not  count  it ;  but  it  is  being 
counted  none  the  less.  Down  among  his  nerve-cells 
and  fibers  the  molecules  are  counting  it,  registering 
and  storing  it  up  to  be  used  against  him  when  the 
next  temptation  comes.  Nothing  we  ever  do  is,  in 
strict  scientific  literalness,  wiped  out.  Of  course 
this  has  its  good  side  as  well  as  its  bad  one.  As  we 
become  permanent  drunkards  by  so  many  separate 
drinks,  so  we  become  saints  in  the  moral,  and  au- 


Progress  and  Patience  193 

tborities  and  experts  in  the  practical  and  scientific 
spheres,  by  so  many  separate  acts  and  hours  of  work. 
Let  no  youth  have  any  anxiety  about  the  upshot  of 
his  education,  whatever  the  line  of  it  may  he.  If  he 
keep  faithfully  busy  each  hour  of  the  working  day, 
he  may  safely  leave  the  final  result  to  itself.  He  can 
with  perfect  certainty  count  on  waking  up  some  fine 
morning  to  find  himself  one  of  the  competent  ones 
of  his  generation,  in  whatever  pursuit  he  may  have 
singled  out.  Silently  between  all  the  details  of  his 
business,  the  power  of  judging  in  all  that  class  of 
matter  will  have  built  itself  up  within  him  as  a  pos- 
session that  will  never  pass  away.  Young  people 
should  know  this  truth  in  advance.  The  ignorance 
of  it  has  probably  engendered  more  discouragement 
and  faint-heartedness  in  youths  embarking  on  ardu- 
ous careers,  than  all  other  causes  put  together."  ^  — i 

It  may  take  a  long  time  to  acquire  as  a  habit  the 
realization  of  our  higher  ideals,  but  the  time  of  ac- 
quisition will  come  to  him  who  waits  for  it.  The 
very  possession  of  the  ideal  and  the  sense  of  its  un- 
attainment  are  guarantees  of  this.  A  man  says  to 
me  there  is  no  God,  and  I  go  off  alone,  and  my  heart 
says,  "O  my  Father,"  and  I  hear  His  voice,  "O  my 
child,"  and  I  know  that  that  hunger  and  the  indu- 
bitable, though  inaudible,  response  to  it,  are  the  as- 
surance that  what  has  been  said  to  me  is  false.  I 
dream  my  dream  of  the  life  that  may  be,  and  of  the 
thing  that  can  be  done,  and  men  say  it  is  just  a  vision 
of  my  own  thought  and  that  no  one  ever  has  realized 
'3 


194  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

it  or  ever  can,  but  the  fact  that  it  lingers  in  my  heart 
is  the  assurance  that  some  day  I  shall  see  it  face  to 
face.  The  fact  that  we  stretch  after  it  with  yearn- 
ing proves  to  each  man  of  us  that  the  thing  we  have 
not  is  the  thing  that  some  day  we  shall  have.  The 
dream  would  not  be  there  if  some  day,  far  away 
where  the  tints  of  evening  lie,  we  shall  not  at  last 
accomplish  it  and  possess  it  as  our  own. 

In  the  very  hour  when  we  realize  most  keenly 
how  wide  the  chasm  is  that  separates  us  from  it, 
when  our  hearts  rise  up  in  strongest  revolt  against 
being  numbered  with  those  who  have  failed,  and 
when  yet  despair  tempts  us  to  believe  that  the  future 
will  hold  nothing  better  for  us  than  the  past,  that  is 
rhe  very  hour  when  the  victory  that  opens  the  door 
to  a  new  life  is  about  to  be  won.  You  remem- 
ber the  scene  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  the  prophecy 
of  Isaiah.  It  was  when  the  prophet  had  fallen 
down  in  the  temple  on  his  face,  his  mouth  in 
his  hand,  and  his  hand  in  the  dust,  conscious  that 
his  life  was  rottenness,  and  evil,  and  wreck,  when 
he  cried  out  of  his  knowledge  of  his  failure,  "I  am  a 
man  of  unclean  lips,  and  I  dwell  in  the  midst  of  a 
people  of  unclean  lips,"  then,  in  the  very  hour 
when  he  saw  most  clearly  of  all  the  hours  of  his  life 
how  far  short  he  had  come,  he  heard  the  great  voice. 
"Man,  let  Me  touch  thy  lips;  this  is  the  hour  of  a 
new  life  to  thee.  Stand  upon  thy  feet."  And  as  out 
of  the  very  depths  of  his  consciousness  of  unattain- 
ment  and  flaw,  Isaiah  rose,  he  heard  that  alluring 


Progress  and  Patience  195 

voice,  the  most  enticing  voice  that  ever  speaks  to 
man, — more  alluring  and  more  enticing  because  it 
expects  always  that  the  man  will  know  that  it  is  for 
him  though  his  name  be  not  named, — "Whom  shall  I 
send,  and  who  will  go  for  us  ?"  and  the  man  who 
knows  that  he  has  failed  cries  out  of  the  very  depths 
of  his  failure,  and  in  the  hour  of  it,  "Here  am  I, 
Lord,  send  me." 

If  you  and  I  will  look  out  over  our  lives  and  will 
enter  into  Paul's  spirit  as  he  looked  out  over  his  life, 
with  all  its  fine  achievement,  so  much  finer  than  any 
achievement  of  ours,  and  will  say  each  of  us:  "My 
life,  too>  has  fallen  short;  I  have  not  yet  appre- 
hended :  but  this  one  thing  I  do,  forgetting  my  last 
year,  wherever  and  whatever  it  may  have  been,  for- 
getting that,  forgetting  the  last  fortnight,  forgetting 
everything  that  is  behind,  and  stretching,  as  the  race- 
horse strains  himself  in  his  course,  unto  the  things 
that  are  before,  I  press  on  toward  the  mark  for  the 
prize  of  the  upward  calling  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus," 
then  we  may  be  sure  that  some  day  we  shall  arrive. 
And  what  wall  it  matter  then  that  our  path  was 
strewn  with  failure  and  shortcomings,  if  only  we 
stand  secure  in  our  victory  at  last  ? 

"  Safe  home,  safe  home  in  port, 

Rent  cordage,  shattered  deck, 
Torn  sail,  provisions  short, 
And  only  not  a  wreck, — 
But  they  may  smile  upon  the  shore 
Who  tell  their  voyage  perils  o'er. 


196  The  Marks  of  a  Man 

"  The  prize,  the  prize  secure 

The  athlete  nearly  fell. 
Bare  all  he  could  endure, 

And  bare  not  always  well, — 
But  he  may  smile  at  trials  gone, 
Who  lays  the  victor's  garland  on." 

And  yet  that  is  not  the  right  note.  There  is  a 
Christian  salvage  of  character  such  as  this,  but  we 
are  thinking  of  higher  things,  of  a  really  victorious 
life,  a  life  whose  failures  are  failures  of  attainment, 
not  of  transgression,  which  has  been,  when  it  closes, 
the  life  of  a  conquerer  and  more, — triumphant, 
with  a  margin.  "For  we,"  says  Paul,  "are  more  than 
conquerers  through  Christ  who  loved  us,"  So  can 
we  also  be. 

But  "through  Christ."  As  I  close  these  lectures 
I  would  return  to  the  truth  which  I  pressed  at  the 
beginning.  Jesus  Christ  is  the  only  right  ideal  of 
character.  He  is  also  the  only  creator  of  right  char- 
acter. If  we  would  be  the  men  we  ought,  we  must 
lay  ourselves  under  His  molding  hand  to  be  shaped 
and  remade  by  Him.  "If  you  will  come  to  me,"  He 
is  saying  still  to  men,  "I  will  take  you  and  I  will 
make  you  what  you  ought  to  be,  what  you  can  not 
otherwise  become."  We  may  put  the  matter  in  new 
theological  phrases  if  we  wish,  but  the  old  evangel- 
ical realities  are  still  true.  By  Christ  alone  can  life 
be  delivered  of  its  sin,  from  all  the  guilt  and  burden 
of  it,  felt  deepest  in  proportion  as  men  rise  highest 
in  the  essentials  of  Christian  character.  In  Christ 
alone  can  men  find  the  new  wills,  the  transformed 


Progress  and  Patience  197 

minds,  the  altered  affections  without  which  no  new 
manhood  can  be.  You  can  not  depersonalize  the  ad- 
jective "Christian."  It  gets  all  its  meaning  from 
the  historic  Christ.  He  and  not  His  message,  not 
His  Kingdom,  not  His  Spirit,  is  the  living  fountain 
of  the  Christian  faith  and  the  Christian  character. 
"Whoever  would  be  a  man  must  learn  his  lesson  and 
acquire  his  strength  from  THE  MAST  CHEIST  JESUS. 


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